Fleas

Dog Fleas

Dog fleas often carry tapeworms. If your pet has had a flea infestation, consider checking or treating him for tape worms.

The presence of just a few fleas can cause a severe allergic reaction in your pet characterized by severe itching and hair loss above the tail.

An adult flea mates shortly after emergence from their pupae and begins laying eggs within 36 hours. The female lays eggs on the host animal, but the eggs fall to the ground, carpet, sofa, dog bed, owner’s bed, or easy chair where they hatch in two-to-five days.

In her brief 50-day life span, a single female flea can lay more than 2000 eggs.

An adult flea can jump about 100 times its own height.

Female fleas need blood to complete their reproductive cycle. Baby fleas need blood to grow.

Fleas can be very hard to detect so look for flea “signs” instead of the fleas themselves. Flea dirt looks like sprinkled pepper on the dog. If you drop some of this “pepper” onto a damp paper towel and it turns reddish, it’s flea stool (dried blood.)

Treatment

There is a plethora of flea control products today including monthly applications, sprays, dips, shampoos, collars and herbal products. It can be very difficult to determine what is right for your pet and your situation. To make matters even more complicated, many of today’s products can be dangerous if used together.

If you bath or dip your dog to kill fleas, many more remain in the home and yard your pet will be reinfested very quickly. Spraying and fogging the premise is expensive and time consuming and does not kill the eggs. The whole procedure must be repeated in 2 weeks.

I am not in the habit of recommending a single product, but in this case, I make an exception.

What I recommend to every dog owner is applying a flea, tick preventative and repellent to protect your pet from diseases such as heartworm, West Nile Virus and Lyme Disease. There are many such products found in stores but in my many years experience as a dog groomer, most of these are not effective. The only products that WE FIND work ALL THE TIME are the veterinary applications such as FRONTLINE PLUS and ADVANTAGE . For many years these were only available through your Veterinarian. You can now purchase these products without a prescription online saving you valuable time and money. The newest of these products is called ADVANTIX . This is the one we use and highly recommend. It not only kills fleas and ticks but also repels mosquitoes that can carry West Nile Virus.

The best part about using these products is you do not need to treat the home and yard. Most of the fleas die within 12 hours and any fleas in the area will die within a few days after jumping on your pet. Even in severe cases, you will see no fleas at all after 2 weeks.

Our Recommendation:

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