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Controlling Fleas in Dogs and Cats

Controlling Fleas in Dogs and Cats

 

With flea season fast approaching its important to keep on top of fleas on your pets and in your home! This can be done in a number of ways:

  • Kill fleas on your dog/cat – getting rid of the fleas in your house is pointless if you still have fleas on your pet and vise versa, so it’s vital to rid all of them to stop the problem
  • Eliminate fleas in your home – either by contacting professionals to rid your house of fleas or doing it yourself, it’s important to clean every surface and everything thing in your house as fleas will be hiding everywhere and anywhere
  • Prevent future infestations – simply by taking tablets fortnightly or weekly in hotter periods, you can prevent another severe infestation

Spot-on Flea Treatment

 

Spot-on treatment works by putting a liquid directly on the neck of your pet from a pipette. It in general costs less and lasts longer so can be great if you’re on a budget. It’ll also mean you won’t have to get a tablet down your pet’s throat, which to some owners will be a great relief.  Spot on treatment can also be applied any time of the month and only needs to be applied once every 4 weeks, compared to the every 2 weeks for tablets and is also quick to work and easy to apply.

Although it sounds like a winning product, spot on treatment takes a couple days to completely absorb so can be dangerous to children or other pets in the process and can cause skin sensitivities.

Some other examples of disadvantages to spot on treatment:

  • Can be very dangerous if your pet ingests it
  • It contains an exact dosage, so if you don’t get all of the product out it wont be as efficient
  • Harmful to humans
  • Has to be places in exactly the right position otherwise it won’t work or your pet will be able to lick and scratch at it
  • Some treatments need your pets to be bather before and/or after treatment

Oral Flea Treatment

Oral Flea Treatment is the easiest to administer out of flea treatment for your pets, and also the most effective. It is also 99.9% effective compared to the 88.4% effectiveness for Topical flea treatment. This makes it 11.5% more effective and gives a whole-body protection. Not only is it fast working – in some cases as fast as 15 minutes – it’s also out of your pets system in up to 3 days. This means you can use them in conjunction with other flea and worm treatments. However, the tablet has to be taken whole to be effective as it is less likely to work when crushed up.

The main advantage of oral treatments is that there’s no sticky mess and the doses are better. This means that you won’t leave any dose behind like you do with topical flea treatment. However, oral treatment doesn’t include flea eggs and larvae which will fall off in your house and garden, so your house will need to be treated too to hopefully completely stop any further infestations.

House Treatments

 

If your pet has fleas there’s a high likelihood that your pet does, and vice versa, making it important to treat your house for fleas as well as your pet. Despite popular belief, house pets can get fleas without going outside as fleas and their eggs are brought in by us when we leave the house and nest in our homes especially when temperatures rise above 20°c- making it important to treat both pet and house regardless if they’re an indoor pet or not.

Houses can be treated in a couple of ways:

  • Professionally – we recommend getting your house treated for fleas by professionals as they’ll be the most effective and efficient  way of ridding them.
  • Flea Sprays – the sprays are also effective, but only if you do the entire house in one go. For them all windows have to be shut and all pets removed as they’re toxic to them for a couple hours after use. The foggers work the same, just without the trigger.
  • Flea Bombs – the bombs also work the same as the spray, but you light them up.
  • Flea Powder – just shake onto the surface, leave, and hoover. Don’t allow anything to walk over the powder.

Team Shanklinpets