Fleas and ticks and mange and mites and

Life Pets & Other Animals
#1

I have a lovely doG who is well cared for and lives inside except for when she’s on her large tile balcony (no grass) or on walks. The trouble is that she has many stray “friends” that we meet on our walks, and she likes to play and do sniffies with them.

Now someone has told me that my pup likely has fleas since summer is flea season. How can I keep the whole house from becoming infested without poisoning the doG? And what about ticks, mange, mites and all of those other nasties? (Our doG in Canada never had fleas, and she spent most of her time outside, so I really don’t know which products or procedures are recommended or available here).

#2

Give her a good hosing every three weeks or so and use pyrethrum(sp?)-based shampoo. That’ll take care of fleas and ticks. Use a flea collar and pay particular attention to the base of the tail (fleas) and neck, shoulders and withers (ticks). You can get packets of powder from the vet that you mix with water and spray around the sleeping area, etc.

#3

I know Sandy is the expert on fleas…but :wink:
Personally, I have had very limited success with flea and tick collars. Fortunately, these days there is a better way.
http://1frontlineflea.com/frontline-flea-info.htm
This a one-step solution that is applied (just a few drops) to the dog’s back, just between the shoulder-blades. It is not dirt cheap (check with your vet) but I have used it for three years (flea and tick seasons) and I have to say that it actually does work…more than I can say for Sandy’s hangover remedy… :shock:

#4

[quote=“wolfen”]Fortunately, these days there is a better way.
[/quote]

Right, I forgot about that. The stuff we get from out vet here is the same but made by the Bayer company.
And the hangover remedy works just fine. You just have to remember: tie the bacon rind to the string, hold the other end of the string, swallow the bacon and JIGGLE the string. It won’t work if you forget to jiggle.

#5

:!: No wonder it wasn’t working :!:

#6

I went through flea and tick hell with my cocker spaniel and here’s what I learned:

  1. Get rid of the carpets. This helped a lot.

  2. Clean/vacuum under the cushions of your furniture and also under the mattress, mattress padding. I had ticks crawling all over hell in my apartment and couldn’t figure out where they were coming from. I turned everything upside-down and found (to my horror) two huge ticks and thousands of eggs on my bed frame right under the mattress.

  3. I’ve heard from vets that you must change flea collars often because the humidity keeps them from lasting longer than advertised on the package. The liquid drops seem to work better.

  4. After this, my dog still did take home fleas on occasion. I couldn’t figure it out, especially since she is usually too scared of other dogs to come close to them. My theory was that she was picking them up at the vets after being groomed (cockers need to be professionally groomed once a month) and waiting in one of the cages before I came to pick her up. I talked to the vet about it and after that, there hasn’t been any problems with fleas since then.

  5. I used a fogger once, which worked for while. There also used to be a French tick/flea spray called Tiquanis (I think) that you could buy here. You could spray it on the dog and its bed and it controlled things well and didn’t smell bad like the other flea and tick sprays for sale. It was in an aerosal can, though, and would set off the gas alarm.

Hope this helps!

#7

What makes them “tick”?
http://entomology.ucdavis.edu/faculty/rbkimsey/tickbio.html
…so they could be hanging around your apartment for months without feeding, just waiting for a chance…

You have carpets? Wow. I remember carpets…
Seriously, get rid of the collars. They just don’t work. Check my earlier post.

#8

[quote=“wolf_reinhold”]What makes them “tick”?
http://entomology.ucdavis.edu/faculty/rbkimsey/tickbio.html
…so they could be hanging around your apartment for months without feeding, just waiting for a chance…

You have carpets? Wow. I remember carpets…
Seriously, get rid of the collars. They just don’t work. Check my earlier post.[/quote]

I still shudder thinking I was sleeping over tons of tick eggs. Yuck.
Sorry for my dialect – when I say carpets, I mean rugs.

#9

Thanks guys!

I got some of that Frontline stuff from the vet but now it says I’m not supposed to apply it until 48 hours after the pup has a bath (or more accurately, is GIVEN a bath) because the skin’s oils are needed to spread it or something. So on Thursday morning, she’s getting Frontlined.

Thanks again for all the tips… any suggestions for washing her bedding or will normal soap do the trick?

#10

[quote=“nemesis”]Thanks guys!

I got some of that Frontline stuff from the vet but now it says I’m not supposed to apply it until 48 hours after the pup has a bath (or more accurately, is GIVEN a bath) because the skin’s oils are needed to spread it or something. So on Thursday morning, she’s getting Frontlined.[/quote]

Frontline is very effective… but remember also not to give doggie a bath again until at least 3 days after you use the Frontline drops.

#11

For what it’s worth, my experience here in Taiwan with three dogs over the past 17 years is that ticks and fleas seem to like young dogs much better than adult ones. Perhaps it is the nice, tender skin. Anyway, our dog was plucked from the street at about three or four months of age and for the first year she was really a tick magnet (check between the toes and next to the paw pads!). But after that she was apparently not so succulent. Even without anti-tick medication she rarely has any problems and she is out every day.

#12

We were at the vet today after rescuing a stray kitten about 7 weeks old, and although it had fleas, the vet said it is too young to apply a flea bath. He said to bring it back in 2 weeks. But we have 2 other cats at home, and don’t want to transmit its fleas to them! We’ve already bathed and dried him, and found 5 fleas on the towel I used to dry him; I’ve since washed it with Lysol and hung it out in the sun to dry. We bought a flea comb, combed him thoroughly, and plan to repeat this several times a day. I’ve quarantined him in a bathroom, and removed the rug from it. We bought a flea collar for him too.

My question is, should that be enough, or is there anything else we can do while awaiting his flea dip? I’ve never had an animal with fleas before, as the strays we adopted had already been deflea’d, and weren’t so young anyway.

Thanks in advance! :rainbow:

#13

[quote=“w_r”]ticks and fleas seem to like young dogs much better than adult ones.[/quote] I agree and it’s strange. You’d think as they get bigger, the fleas just multiply but for some reason I’m noticing that stray pups are always affected the most.

As mentioned, here’s what really works.

Dragonbones,

I think it’s perhaps fine to use very very little of Frontline on a kitten if the kitten is healthy and eating on its own. I’m talking very very little applied to the fur with a damp cloth. I would not apply to the skin. Mind me I’m not absolutely sure. What I know is we had to treat trooper because he was severly infested. It didn’t seem to bother him and he’s now a full grown happy house cat.

Frontline will kill all the fleas on pups like Miso in the picture above. It takes 12 hours for all of them to die. The more you apply, the quicker they die.

bobepine

#14

Thanks bobepine,

Yeah, I mentioned that pic of the dog, which I’ve never forgotten, to Dragonbabe after we spent a couple hours meticulously combing for and crushing and flushing fleas. We might have nabbed three dozen, nothing like that dog!

Junior’s infestation is pretty limited; we might comb out another 4-6 tomorrow, 2-3 the next day, 1 the next… Just a guess.

I got a second opinion from another vet, who said a limited application might be ok, similar to your read. I also bought a spray bottle of stuff to prevent the eggs and larvae from maturing, and applied that in the areas we have him quarantined in. So I feel much better now. :smiley:

#15

[quote=“DB”]I also bought a spray bottle of stuff to prevent the eggs and larvae from maturing, and applied that in the areas we have him quarantined in. So I feel much better now.[/quote] That’s what I did too, feels better to have a mini moat. :slight_smile:

bobepine

#16

when I brought my street pup home he was crawling with ticks and fleas, I picked off as many as I could and soaked him with the flea and tick spray(mind you he had no hair so it was pretty easy to spot the little bastards) I probably wouldn’t do the chemical thing on a pup unless the infestation was really bad.

#17

One vet said to wait 2 weeks before applying, as he’s quite small. I asked another to get a second opinion, and he said it would probably be ok to apply just a little bit. Junior is eating well, using the litterbox, and vigorously active and vociferous, so I think he’s healthy. So perhaps we’ll take him in for a spray in about a week. I’m just really nervous about it spreading to the other cats, and given how far fleas can jump, I’m not sure whether our quarantine will work.

#18

A combination of Frontline for the dogs and the cats and extra raw garlic for the dogs seems to keep ticks and fleas at bay. Most flea powders, collars and shampoos I’ve bought here are crap, and some of those shampoos are so harsh they can strip the oils from an animal’s skin and cause inflammation, which is exaccerbated by the humidity here and can lead to all sorts of skin problems. Frontline is effective and safe if you follow the instructions, and garlic also keeps the vampires away! :wink:

#19

Well, here at chez Stray Dog, we have 17 dogs and a cat, and half the dogs are pups, and I inspect them regularly, and we have yet to have fleas (except on newcomers).

Is it something to do with a weak immune system? That would explain why pups get them, as their own immune system isn’t at full strength until about 16 weeks of age.

The non-human animals here never eat processed food - just good, human-grade meaty bones and vegetables, all given raw. Maybe that has something to do with it, too. :wink:

#20

But what do you do to de-flea the newcomers? I read that it’s easier with dogs, which are more tolerant of some of the chemicals than cats.

We did take Junior to the vet again, to have a slight amount of the flea med applied; this vet said the kitten is about 2 months old, and sexed it as female (the other vet said male). Anyway, it seems to be working, albeit slowly. Our little will be a lot happier when it can come out to play with the others!