Flea and Tick prevention. Use it.

[Lostfiniel]

I'm not trying to exonerate any bad pet owners. But, I know my husband and I have been battling fleas for a long time now. We've had our cats on Frontline plus for 4 months straight and have yet to fully remove the fleas. Each time we put it on, the numbers decrease, but there are obviously still fleas. We vaccum regualrly and our cats are indoor only cats. We don't bathe the cats within 48 hours each side of putting on the meds, we use the full bottle and make sure the cats fit the weight requirements.

I feel awul enough about it as it is. We spend a good hour or so using a flea comb each night on top of our other methods of removal. But, nothing has helped yet. We've gone in twice now to the vet to get them de-wormed when we notice they've gotten worms. They just look at us and say, "You DO know how cats get worms, right?" I swear, we're trying.

We're having the apartment manager bring in pest control to spray everything in a few weeks. We can't think of anything else to do at this point.

[Andara Bledin]

Try Sevin-10 Dust.

It's an all-encompassing insecticide that has yet to be proven to be particularly harmful to anything other than insects (and has some ill effects on the shell strength of breeding waterfowl, so don't use around their breeding grounds) and it's wickedly effective. Fairly inexpensive, too. You should be able to find it in the gardening center of any home improvement place.

Don't get the spray. It's useless once it dries out. The dust, however, needs to be used at a time with no wind (it's very fine), and goes useless once wet.

It says to use outdoors, but my parents used to use it on the carpet and pet bedding to control flea and tick issues (indoor/outdoor pets). They'd leave it out overnight, then vaccum, if I recall correctly.

^-.-^

[EvilEmpryss]

Lostfiniel, you're not the kind of owner that Animal Control would go after: you're doing your damnedest to help your pets and you have the vet bills to prove it.

But there is no excuse for someone who take their dogs to get fixed when the dogs are covered inticks. They HAD to see them on the dogs when they loaded them in the car to take them to the office, so why didn't they do anything about it? If they don't know what to do about the ticks, they should ask the techs at the office for advice. If they didn't do these things, they're neglectful of their pets.

[Andara Bledin]

There is an "Animal Cops" episode that has a dog covered in a massive amount of ticks. The owner was a man of the cloth who couldn't be arsed to do more for his dog than chain it up out back and make sure it had food and water.

^-.-^

[AriRashkae]

I'm not trying to exonerate any bad pet owners. But, I know my husband and I have been battling fleas for a long time now. We've had our cats on Frontline plus for 4 months straight and have yet to fully remove the fleas. Each time we put it on, the numbers decrease, but there are obviously still fleas. We vaccum regualrly and our cats are indoor only cats. We don't bathe the cats within 48 hours each side of putting on the meds, we use the full bottle and make sure the cats fit the weight requirements.

I feel awul enough about it as it is. We spend a good hour or so using a flea comb each night on top of our other methods of removal. But, nothing has helped yet. We've gone in twice now to the vet to get them de-wormed when we notice they've gotten worms. They just look at us and say, "You DO know how cats get worms, right?" I swear, we're trying.

We're having the apartment manager bring in pest control to spray everything in a few weeks. We can't think of anything else to do at this point.

Do you put flea collars in your vacuum bags? We had that problem once or twice, and the combo of flea drops, collar ends in the vacuums (we'd put the collars on a few days after the drops), throwing the bag out right after vacuuming (and vacuuming EVERYthing we could), and bombing worked. Eventually.

[RxBoy]

On a side note here, I know a very easy way to get rid of a flea infestation in your rug. You need a nightlight and a bowl of sudsy soapy water. At night right before you go to bed, place the bowl of soapy water directly underneath the nightlight in the infested room. Make sure that this is the only light in the room. The fleas will instinctively jump toward the light and when they land in the bowl they will not be able to escape and they will drown. It shouldn't take more than a few nights to get rid of them all.

[Fly]

We have never used tick prevention for our dogs. We'd just check them over all the time, never had an issue. However, we had a baby goat recently. He'd been let into the big paddock to socialise with the other goats. He went missing and we found him with a tick, near paralysis. Fixed him up, all good. Three weeks later he went missing again. We found his skeleton six months later. Needless to say, we keep the new batch of babies much closer. After one bad tick, the next one is almost always deadly. I feel for those dogs - round two might be their last

[RecoveringKinkoid]

Diatomaceous earth spread around your house works like a charm and it is non toxic. However, it IS bad for your lungs while it is floating around the air. Wear a dust mask till it settles. Leave it in your rugs for at least a week or two. Put your mask back on and vacuum (or heck, do what I did and leave it all summer...I just used a hokey to surface clean.

I didn.t have a single bug all summer, and that includes roaches.

[Lostfiniel]

Do you put flea collars in your vacuum bags? We had that problem once or twice, and the combo of flea drops, collar ends in the vacuums (we'd put the collars on a few days after the drops), throwing the bag out right after vacuuming (and vacuuming EVERYthing we could), and bombing worked. Eventually.

We weren't particularly worried about killing the fleas in the vacuum bags as we would throw them out in the dumpster outside immediately after vacuuming. (We'd read about fleas breeding in there and just coming right back out when you were done anyway.)

Try Sevin-10 Dust.

It's an all-encompassing insecticide that has yet to be proven to be particularly harmful to anything other than insects (and has some ill effects on the shell strength of breeding waterfowl, so don't use around their breeding grounds) and it's wickedly effective. Fairly inexpensive, too. You should be able to find it in the gardening center of any home improvement place.

Don't get the spray. It's useless once it dries out. The dust, however, needs to be used at a time with no wind (it's very fine), and goes useless once wet.

It says to use outdoors, but my parents used to use it on the carpet and pet bedding to control flea and tick issues (indoor/outdoor pets). They'd leave it out overnight, then vaccum, if I recall correctly.

Thank you! We'll give that a try. We wouldn't be able to use it outdoors anyway. We're on the second floor in an apartment complex (another reason we're stumped as to why we have so many freaking fleas!)

I've also been told to try switching to another flea prevention product; that fleas can begin to form resistances to prevention meds after a while. Not sure about that, but I can give Advantage a try anyway, right?

[Flying Grype]

I think Advantage was the one we used... if I remember correctly, it kills flea eggs and stops adult fleas from breeding. Is that what Frontline does?

[Andara Bledin]

Thank you! We'll give that a try. We wouldn't be able to use it outdoors anyway. We're on the second floor in an apartment complex (another reason we're stumped as to why we have so many freaking fleas!)

They're likely in the walls.

We know that there's an active ant colony in the outside wall of our apartment, so we have to deal with semi-regular ant incursions and will often end up taking out new queens fresh out of the nest.

The Dust is fine enough that it we "splash" a bit of it on a crack in the wall, it'll stick and then there won't be ants using that point of entry again for a very long while.

^-.-^

[jedimaster91]

I've also been told to try switching to another flea prevention product; that fleas can begin to form resistances to prevention meds after a while. Not sure about that, but I can give Advantage a try anyway, right?

Not sure what you use right now, but I use K9 Advantix on one of our dogs and it's wonderful. I decided on that one for several reasons. One is that it's available without a prescription, and now PetSmart sells it over the counter. Secondly, it also protects against mosquitos and ticks. I think I'm going to switch my other dog to the K9 Advantix/Heartgard combo instead of the Advantage Multi the humane society had him on. He's had whipworm, which the Advantage protects against, however it doesn't offer tick protection. And frankly, I would rather deworm both dogs on occasion than have to worry about missing a tick.

[Cats]

We use Frontline on our cats, and it works pretty well, though they do still come in with the occasional tick (which is usually spotted and removed quickly). One time, apparently the dose didn't take well on one of our cats, and right as we discovered this, apparently one had crawled off the cat an onto my side. Sneaky little sucker it was, since I had no idea there was a tick on me until I scratched an itch on the side, felt a pull as I did so, thought it was a scab from a small cut or something, and took a look at my hand, and there was a swollen tick there instead. Three weeks later, it was discovered the little jerk had given me Lyme Disease (I was fortunate, since I had known I was bitten by a tick, and that I developed the signature rash).

So yeah, if I can get sick from a single runaway tick, imagine what can happen to the poor pets if you don't take proper preventative measures!

[Seshat]

Thank you! We'll give that a try. We wouldn't be able to use it outdoors anyway. We're on the second floor in an apartment complex (another reason we're stumped as to why we have so many freaking fleas!)

I'll bet you have neighbours who have flea-ridden, flea-breeding animals. Anyone within a flea's travelling range.

Get your vets' advice on controlling in that situation.

[Arucard]

Just a note, by "stumpy lizards" he means stumpy-tailed lizards. basically, the butt looks like the head sans facial features.

Also, Arucard, does that apply to blue-tongues? We seem to have one in our garden, along with a few babies...not a huge issue for us as they eat all of our snails.

I've never has problems with my bluetongues having big ticks. I've had a couple in the past that got some tiny mites than seemed to hide under the small scales in their 'armpits'. I just regularly scraped them out with a small pin. Combined with bathing, seemed to keep them under control.

My current bluetongues don't have that issue though, but they've been in a controlled environment since they were bought to a friend's back door by his cat at about 1-2 weeks old. One wound up brain damaged from the cat experience. We call him Loopy, and he's the most hilarious lizard I've ever known.