Is flee treatment essential?

[abbies_mumma]

Abbie is currently on a monthly flee and heartworm treatment. When she gets her next yearly vaccs I want to get a heartworm vacc (yearly) for her as well. Then I wouldn't need to get the monthly heartworm and flee stuff. Would I still have to give her flee treatment? If I put garlic in her food will that be enough.

What do you people do? Do you recommend yearly heartworm vacc? And is is OK not to give flee treatment?

Thanks.

A.& A.

[Rebecca, Irena Farm]

You'd still have to do the flea treatment - the flea treatment in the monthly med is seperate if I remember correctly. Someone from Oz will have to confirm, of course.

 

If it's the same HW product as the six months product here, we had some trouble with it and it was removed from the market. It is unclear whether it was the way it was formulated or the drug itself that was causing problems, or whether the problems truly could be traced to the product (which was called Proheart 6).

 

I've never had good luck with the garlic thing if the fleas are really determined.

[kajarrel]

We haven't give our guys (5 dogs/4 cats) flea treatment for about 10 years now because we don't have fleas and my dogs rarely go places where they're exposed to dogs or other animals that have fleas. When we visit my parents' house, I give them a combo flea/tick treatment because the yard is infested with ticks. This has worked for us -- knock on wood. I guess the answer depends upon how prevalent fleas are in your environment

 

Kim

[Sue R]

When we lived in rural southern tier NY (Allegany County), we never treated for fleas, ticks, or heartworm and never needed to do so. I don't think that, in general, where we live here in rural north-central West Virginia, it would be necessary in most years. Megan does tend to pick up an occasional tick on her face when sticking her head down a wood-chuck hole.

 

Since we travel to North Carolina and Virginia with our dogs, and fleas and ticks are problems where we do travel, we prefer treat for fleas and ticks throughout the season.

 

We treat for heartworm year-round as the treatment has benefits for controlling other parasites, as well. I also run fecal tests yearly and, for the pup, every month or two as he's had some problems with giardia and hookworm.

 

What does your vet suggest for your area?

[abbies_mumma]

Thanks for the replys.

I havnt asked my vet about it yet but when we go in for our yearly vaccs I will.

We dont really get ticks in our area and she could only pick up flees from other dogs (which she sees everyday).

I am still thinking about it and our yearly check up and vacc appointment is in October so ive got a while to consider options and ask around. We still have 3 more months supply of Revolution flee and heartworm treatment left.

A.& A.

[ness_bc]

Hey A&A,

 

For what its worth we are in Australia to - Adelaide which is pretty similar in terms of climate and stuff to Melbourne. Ness only gets treated with flea stuff over the summer months (or very rarely - I don't think we did any last year other than 1 batch of advocate to treat some demodetic mange). She hangs out with other dogs but has never seemed to have a problem but it might still be worth using it over summer only and then not worrying about it over winter.

 

Ness gets interceptor tablets for her heartworm as I had heard to many problems with the vaccination and its easy enough to remember to give them to her on the first day of every month.

 

You can get flea products that don't also contain heartworm such as advantage or frontline that just do fleas.

 

So if you wanted to get the heartworm injection you could just use one of those.

 

Sally and Ness

[katendarby]

Remember, too much garlic is bad for dogs, causes anemia. Please don't rely on that for flea aversion treatment! There's been numerous threads on this topic, so be careful.