Cats

Now we can prevent fleas!

Flea control has always been a losing battle, until now . . .

Look First

If no fleas are on you, don't assume there aren't any on your pets. Fleas don't prefer people as hosts, so your pet has to be thoroughly infested before they'll choose you. Flea combs come in handy to get the facts, because combs catch the fleas, flea eggs, and flea dirt (feces), allowing you to see the true extent of your problem. Once you spot fleas, you'll know to start pet treatments.

Don't delay

Each flea on an animal consumes about a drop of blood a day. A heavy infestation can actually cause anemia, a life threatening condition. An allergic animal can scratch itself raw within a day, after only one or two bites.

The Older Way

Until the development of the new methods, controlling fleas here in the northwest was a matter of continuous, expensive chemical warfare. Attention had to be paid to killing fleas around the house and in the yard, as well as on our pets.

On the Animals

Using conventional insecticides, we had to shampoo and dip dogs, and bathe, spray, or powder cats every one or two weeks, a schedule that had to be continued throughout the warmer months, and until winter settled in with a couple of hard frosts. Even during winter, though, we had to stay alert: sometimes warming up the house at the start of heating season can encourage a hatch of eggs in carpet, starting flea troubles all over again. While worst from August through November, flea season here in the northwest is usually year-round. Bathing and dipping cats and dogs all through the year was messy, difficult, inconvenient, and because of the chemicals involved a health risk. Modern preventative medicines avoid all these drawbacks.

Around the House

To kill fleas indoors, flea bombs have never been the best choice, because the mist from bombs only kills fleas where it lands, leaving spots under furniture untouched. Instead, we have recommended handheld sprays or commercial carpet treatments. Today, a well controlled house simply doesn't need such treatments.

In the Yard

Our pets' outdoor environment will always represent a source of new fleas. Studies have shown that raccoons and opossums steadily carry new fleas into back yards in even the most urbanized parts of Portland. Using older techniques meant periodically spraying with poisons or other, more expensive alternatives. With the new methods, these arriving fleas never have a chance to gain a foothold in our homes. Your pet's yard ceases to be a threat to health.

Traditional?

We still carry these older products, and we'll gladly show you how to use them most effectively. They're still quite useful for knocking down a bad initial infestation. But once you're ready to start a maintenance program, we hope you'll consider switching to the more effective, more convenient, and safer preventative approach. It doesn't make sense to constantly play catch-up with fleas when it's easier and more effective to prevent them from infesting your pets in the first place.

A New Approach

We've had a great deal of success with a treatment called Program. Administered to your pets as a single monthly dose (a pill for dogs, liquid or pill for cats), the active ingredient in Program is an enzyme that prevents immature flea larvae from producing chitin, a protein necessary for their exoskeleton, or shell. They can't live or breed without that, so their reproductive cycle is destroyed. That means that although adult fleas don't die, and need to be controlled through other measures, after biting your pet they'll be infertile. Normally, one adult flea will lay over 400 eggs in its lifetime, but this product ensures that those eggs won't hatch. After the first generation of fleas dies, Program may then be all you need to keep them under control.

Program has been proven safe for pets and humans. The medicine is recommended for all sizes and weights of dogs and cats, breeding pets, and puppies and kittens as young as six weeks. It reduces your need for other treatments, but is safe to use with them, too. Sold only by veterinarians, Program is safe, effective, convenient, and reasonably priced.

Researchers have made progress in adulticides, too. Two that we recommend are Advantage and Frontline. Though they are different substances, both of these products work by disrupting the fleas' nerve function, without harming your pet, and they stay effective for at least a month. Advantage is administered as a drop of liquid applied to the pet's skin, while Frontline comes as a drop or a spray. Both are highly effective at killing adult fleas on contact. Frontline also protects against ticks. Both products have a wide margin of safety for both cats and dogs.

An Integrated Approach

Advantage and Frontline both will let fleas live long enough to lay fertile eggs after about three weeks, and the ones that have any resistance to the medicines will breed better. Therefore, to avoid encouraging fleas to develop a resistance to these products, it's important to use them as parts of an integrated plan that incorporates both a developmental or growth inhibitor, such as Program or FleaBusters (which treats indoor carpets to control flea development there), and an adulticide, such as Advantage. The combination can deliver nearly perfect flea control that also prevents the appearance of resistant fleas, keeping the effectiveness of the treatments high. Ask us what treatment will be best for you.

Call us for information, an examination, or any of the products mentioned here. We want to help your animal friends enjoy life flea free.