What are Fleas?
Fleas are little bugs. Usually you can see them if you part your dog or cat’s hair on the back near the tail or on the belly. You can see little black things crawling around. They’re pretty small. They’re about one to two millimeters or so I’d say. What would I compare them to? I don’t know, but you can see them crawling around. There are mostly cat fleas but both cats and dogs get them. Your dogs and cats get them from being around other cats and dogs. Sometimes they can just be in the yard or the dog park and there can be flea eggs and flea larvae there and they will pick up the fleas from the dog park, or outside, apartment complexes, where all of the dogs walk around. Those are terrible places for your dog to get fleas, so if you are a person who lives in an apartment, I tell them, “look, you have to have flea control. You have to put something on your dog.”
Look at what I have to resort to if you don’t treat my fleas…
Flea Control
Flea control is something you put on your dog or your cat and it’s going to kill the fleas that are on the dog or cat and prevent anymore from getting on them. The flea control that’s the safest and I like the best are Advantage and Frontline and you can get both of those of course at Wells Branch Pet and Bird Clinic.
Flea control has come a long way. We used to just use nasty, toxic medicine that we would dip the dogs in and cats in and it didn’t really dip them in, I think that term actually came from doing the livestock but we actually would mix it up in a gallon, bathe the dog and then pour it over them. I don’t know if you’ve ever done that with your dog or cat at home but we did it a lot in the clinic. I’ve done it a lot for a long time and it’s very chemically smelling. It goes all over the clinic and you can smell the toxin. It’s toxic because it’s supposed to kill something. It’s supposed to kill the fleas but still you’re supposed to use just enough the where it doesn’t hurt your dog or cat. That’s what we used to do. I still have people come in and ask if we can do a flea dip on their dog. I say no, I’m not doing flea dips anymore because there are products like Frontline and Advantage that are incredibly safe, they don’t have that chemical toxic smell because they’re not toxic. I can have it on my hands and not be worried about what I am going to get. You can apply it on your dog. It’s what we call a spot on. It’s a liquid that you apply to the skin of the dog and when you apply it, when you put it on, it spreads all over the body by itself by the body’s movement and the skin oils and goes all over the dog, from the tip of the nose to the tip of the tail, covers the dog completely and kills any fleas that are there and stays on the pet for a good amount of time. The product label says four weeks, probably two or three weeks to get good protection. And it’s really safe. That’s what I like.
What About Store-Bought Flea Treatment?
There are a lot of things in the grocery store that look the same or are made to be applied the same way, but look, those things have the same things in it that we used to use in our dips. It’s the same medicine and it’s not that safe. It’s not as safe as Frontline and Advantage and it doesn’t work as well. People use those products. It’s cheaper. Well, you know, it’s cheaper for a reason. It doesn’t work as well. Not as good for your pet. Not as safe. So that’s the difference with the products we use and the products in the grocery store for flea control.
To have your pet treated for fleas, call Wells Branch Pet and Bird Clinic at 512-339-8472.
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