The downside to owning pooches as autumn becomes more, er, autumnal* is the onset of little biting buggers, especially if you forget to keep up with their flea treatment. I never had this problem with my short-haired weimaraner but since my daughter’s mutt moved in I have been engaged in a losing battle.
Dear Marge, what is the answer? At least I know a song about it. A consolation prize at least.
* (c) every bleeding BBC weather presenter at the moment.
Our current cat isn’t bothered by fleas, although she has a spot-on treatment every month just in case, especially since it also guards against ticks and other nasty disease-carrying things. But our dear departed Ethel had lovely thick, soft fur and was like some sort of luxury resort for fleas, so it was a constant battle. It’s from this time of year they can become a problem in the home, so treating carpets and soft furnishings is the first step, followed by thorough, frequent hoovering (of the house, not the dogs), and using a flea comb, every day if the buggers are persistent. I would have thought things would be easier with pooches as you can bath them with medicated shampoo, but a good spray in addition to a regular spot-on of a good brand – both of them bought at the vet’s as opposed to a supermarket – should tip the balance in your favour.
We use something called Bravecto on our dogs, it’s a chewable tablet that they are supposed to like (they don’t, it’s a fight to get them to take it), we’ve never seen a flea all the time we’ve had them. It also kills ticks as well which is good as we are rural and the dogs often excerise in field where sheep have been grazing.
Those fabulous flea rekkers.
Never never forget the treatment, dear reader….. I did one summer, it being a hot one. Rather than kennelling the hounds for the holiday, a daily dog walker came round daily, I think bringing in a veritable plague of scratchy hounds as she did. On return all seemed initially well, until black leggings, no, of course not mine, revealed themselves as very attractive to a veritable bouncing menagerie. You know Pigpen, in Peanuts, not the dead Dead one, the swirl of lines denoting movement? Not an exaggeration. The house was alive. All kids had to move out to their fathers house, and the then Mrs Path and I booked into a hotel, various hotels, whilst scores of increasingly toxic, all the legal and then eventually banned substances were sprayed, scrubbed everywhere. Time after time it was humans nil, fleas rampant. I think we probably took some of our invaders to one of the hotels. It has since closed. About a fortnight we were free, but that funny smell remained and the size of the veg in the garden were both impressive and bizarre thereafter. The dogs survived.
The best household spray I found was one made by Rentokil. I wouldn’t use it anywhere a pet might sit, but for those stubborn down-the-back-of-the-sofa fleas it was brilliant; much better (and cheaper) than even vet-bought ones.
And a flea collar placed inside your hoover makes sure any eggs or adult hoppers sucked up are killed.
I had a conversation with my daughter on the walk to school this morning about whether or not Ewoks have fleas. She was adamant that they don’t, but that Chewbacca probably did. I pointed out that Ewoks live in a decidedly rural environment with plenty of natural parasites, whereas Chewbacca lives on a modern spaceship with future* hygiene technology and that the bandolier he wears could well double as a space flea collar. She wasn’t buying any of it. The matter remains undecided.
The actual dog has no sign of any fleas yet, thank goodness.
*yes, yes, “a long time ago in a galaxy far far away”, I know. Don’t push us when we’re hot.
Lord, here comes the fleas. We’ll say goodbye to pie and peas.