Ticks & Lyme disease

Hello! First poster here I’ve been into survival and general outdoorsmanship, conservation,foraging, etc and have camped plenty of times when I lived in Mexico this was on the beach where few ticks were found. Recently I’ve gotten out of a giant depression slump by hiking and backpacking with my husky Della. After our daily hike we come back and with this particularly wet spring the tall grass has been overrun with ticks. Every 5-10 paces I’ll stop and shake off 4-5 ticks on myself. I’ve heard of many solutions to keep ticks away and tried many and none have worked. I take Lyme desease seriously ever since I met an amputee that suffered from Lyme desease. My questions are:

1. Is Lyme desease as bad as people say in the context of a survival situation?
2. What are your strategies to keep the nasty bastards at bay?

P.S i take every precaution I can under the sun for Della with tick collars and the anti tick drops.