Fleas, along with dog mange, are the classic dog skin
problem. They’re parasites that jump on your dog and attempt to feed on his
blood, causing all sorts of problems in the process.
These insects pose a real threat if not properly handled,
and are known to even attack humans on occasion. Worse still, eradicating them
is no easy task.
The articles below offer all the information you need to
understand and treat this particular skin problem.
1.) Fleas On Dogs, Part One: Where, Why and How – This first
article aims to help you understand more about fleas and their habits, such as
their life cycles, method of attack and preferred habitats.
2.) Fleas On Dogs, Part Two: Dog Treatments – The second
article will educate you on the various forms of dog medication on the market,
designed to eliminate fleas and prevent them from performing any further
attacks on your dog. That’s not all – it also compares the different methods
and weighs their pros and cons so that you have a better understanding of the
treatments available to you.
Fleas On Dogs, Part One: Where, Why, How
Fleas. Say that to anyone who has a dog and they’ll start
giving you looks of horror. “Oh god!” They’ll say, clutching their furry
friends as though they’ll be parted forever at any moment, “You mean my dog has
them?” Cue the frenzied ruffling through their furs before they let out an
audible sigh, right before the attempt to strangle you.
You might laugh at their overreaction – it’s hypothetical
situation, after all – but if you have a dog of your own, you wouldn’t be
laughing either, would you?
Just in case you said ‘Oh sure I still would’, well… you
shouldn’t.
Here’s why.
If your dog is a walking flea population center, he will die
by getting his blood sucked out of him. His veins will be empty, his tongue a
slight tinge of pink, and fleas will cover his body and drink to their hearts
content.
Sorry, that was a little harsh. But do you see where I’m
going with this? It’s really no laughing matter. If it goes unchecked, your
dog’s life will be in danger. Fortunately, most dog owners will panic and send
him to a pet hospital ASAP if the severity of the situation even exceeds half
of that very grim picture I just painted above, but it’s good to know just how
much damage fleas can do if left unchecked.
I once watched a program on the Discovery Channel about an
emergency animal clinic. Can’t remember the name of the show (If you could tell
me, I would appreciate it!), but there was this case where a puppy was
neglected by his owners, and there were fleas just hanging out underneath his
floppy ears. It covered the whole area like a cave full of bats. To tell
the truth, thinking about it now still gives me the shivers, it was insane how
bad it was.
The poor little guy’s gum and tongue were – you guessed it –
light pink. He was severely anemic and he needed help at once. After a good
verbal lashing by the lady heading the response unit, the puppy was brought to
their lab, where they started helping him by plucking out every single flea
they found. Still cringing at the thought, here.
Anyway, here are some spoilers: the dog was eventually
healed and he turned out perfectly fine and full of energy, so that was a great
ending to the story.
You’re probably panicking about the same happening to your
dog. That’s great, but perfectly unnecessary. Great because you care about your
dog, and people love you for that. Unnecessary because it’s near impossible for
your dog to get like that, if you spend enough time around him. Remember that
in the case from TV that I described above, the owners were plainly apathetic
about the dog’s life. If that’s not you, then that’s not what your dog will be
like.
However, having a couple of fleas sharing real estate on
your dog is still a no-go. For one thing, they’ll multiply, and fast. Even two
is enough to make your dog’s daily life a living hell. You’ll need all the
information you can get to combat a case of fleas, and you’ll be given an
education right… now.
What’s A Flea?
In very simple terms, a flea is a tiny six-legged insect
that sucks blood. There are around 2000 species of them on Earth, but the ones
that love drinking dog blood are the aptly-named dog flea, and the somewhat
ironically-named cat flea. These guys are pretty tough and can live where
there’s no food source for months at a time, until their prey unsuspectingly
walks into the area and provides them with a good meal, or a thousand.
Their infiltration methods are many, but your dog would most
likely get them by having a friendly greeting with other dogs in the park, or
even within the park itself. In fact, they could originate from anywhere
outside your home. It’s really hard to say.
The life cycle of the flea comes in four stages: the egg,
the larva, the pupa and the adult flea. The female adult fleas can lay
thousands of eggs onto suitable places, where they will hatch into the larval
stage and start feeding on icky things like dried blood and poop. After that,
they enter the pupa stage where they will hide in tough durable cases before
emerging as fully-grown adults. These pupae are so resilient that no chemical
pesticides can kill them, which is the reason why adult fleas seem to persist
even after a really good spray that seemed to have had the potential to
eradicate all life in the area.
Finally, the adult flea emerges, ready to suck on some blood
and repeat the cycle anew.
It should be noted that if you do discover fleas on your
dog, they only make up 5% of the total population within the vicinity. Where’s
the other 95%, you say? Oh, they’re in the vicinity. That’s why you
don’t declare a Mission Accomplished when your dog is free from the bugs,
because there’s more where those came from and they can’t resist joining the
roving buffet.
Symptoms of Fleas on Dogs
As anyone knows, fleas suck. Not just figuratively, but
literally too – they survive by ingesting the blood of their prey. When they’re
done with feeding, they’ll leave a small red dot on the skin. That’s usually
called a ‘flea bite’. This is pretty hard to find on dogs though, so don’t
immediately rule out fleas when you don’t see any of these.
The first sign that your dog is having a skin condition can
be seen from the constant scratching and biting that he does, which usually
means that he’s really itchy. Apart from the itching, other symptoms include
hair loss in the affected area, as well as rashes, lesions and other
infections. If your dog has Flea Allergy Dermatitis, it means he’s allergic to
the saliva of fleas and he’ll develop the above conditions faster, along with
more pronounced effects.
That’s all well and good, but we also know that there’s a
ton of dog skin problems out there that have the same symptoms, right? How do
you know if it’s fleas?
Here’s what you can do to be sure: First, place your dog on
something disposable or washable, like a piece of newspaper, a towel, a basin
or something. Then, grab a fine-toothed comb and start running it through the
fur, and against the grain. If you’re lucky (or unlucky, depending on your
perspective), you’ll see some dark-coloured bits dropping out of the fur and
onto the newspaper/towel/what-have-you.
There’s something else you can do if you want to be sure. If
you spot a few dark pellets that were just dislodged from your dog’s fur, take
them and place it on a piece of tissue paper, then drip a bit of water on it.
Rub it against the tissue paper if you want to hasten the process. If there’s a
red stain that looks suspiciously like blood, you’re right. Those things are
usually called ‘flea dirt’, but what they really are is flea poop. There is a
quote that goes, ‘You are what you eat’, and this is exactly what’s happening.
Now that you’ve learned where they come from and how
annoying they are, let’s move on to how they should be killed, down to the last
bug. Put on your war paint, friends, because we’re declaring a war on fleas.
Fleas On Dogs, Part Two: Dog Treatments
In the first of this two-part series, which can be found
here, we briefly discussed the flea: their life cycles, how they jump aboard
your dog in the first place and how to tell if they’re the ones making your dog
miserable and itchy. That’s okay though, because in this second part we’ll be
talking about how these bugs can be forcibly removed from the premises. In
other words, I’m going to tell you what to do to kill those fleas and save your
dog.
There are a ton of options available when deciding to treat
your dog in regards to fleas. On one hand, that’s a good thing because we can
choose the method we want to use. Then again, the prospect of too many choices
usually forces us into undertake endless research to find out which one out of the
lot is the best for our needs.
Therefore, I’m going to describe what I’ve discovered about
each remedy for the rest of this article, to help you understand how each of
them function, and their general performance in regards to cleaning out those
fleas.
Flea Collars
Let’s start with the cheapest and most accessible option in
the market: flea collars. These are worn like normal collars, and if the
advertisements are true, just fasten them around the neck, and the fleas will
start dying. It’s safe, easy to use, and effective too!
But is it?
There are three types of flea collars, each with a different
mechanism for dealing with fleas. Collar #1 relies on the traditional way of
releasing a poisonous gas, harmful only to fleas and ticks. These seem to be pretty
good, but what you should be aware of is that the radius of the gas is pretty
small – I would say that it probably takes care of the head and neck area
rather well, but is ineffective for all other parts of the body. This is pretty
helpful if you have ticks, since they usually concentrate on the head and neck
regions, but useless for fleas living the life on the dog’s lower body
otherwise.
Collar #2 also produces poisonous substances that can be
absorbed into the fat layer of the dog, which will slowly kill the fleas.
Again, it doesn’t spread down to the rest of the body other than the head and
neck, so the fleas would just move out of those places and settle somewhere
else. Besides, who’s to know if it’s harmless to humans, especially when
there’s a toddler around? I wouldn’t know, but it doesn’t seem safe to me. I
won’t comment on scattered reports about these being highly poisonous to your
dog as I’m truly not sure about the effects, but try and weigh your options
carefully with this one.
Collar #3 apparently uses a kind of ‘ultrasonic anti-flea
wave’ to kill the bugs. I have no idea how this works, and from what I’ve read,
nobody seems to take these collars seriously, so feel free to laugh at them.
I think it’s pretty clear that flea collars aren’t exactly
the method of choice I would use to clear the fleas off my dog, and it’s
definitely not the best by far. I guess if you’re pretty hard up for money, you
could give these a try – most of them usually retail for less than $10 – but I
would suggest looking for other forms of remedies. Speaking of which, it’s now
time to delve into another option.
Flea Shampoo
This is pretty logical: a shampoo product that also has
anti-flea benefits. Pretty good, right? Most people do agree that flea shampoos
have their uses, but they start to get argumentative when it comes to how useful
these are for the long term.
For the most part, a flea shampoo acts like a normal
shampoo; you use the formula to wash your dog as clean as you can, and the
fleas will get poisoned, die, and roll off your dog’s back or get washed away
by rinsing water. Usually they’ll all be gone by the time your dog has had his
bath. Success!
Ah, but here’s the catch: They kill fleas, but they don’t
prevent them from coming back. It’s like chasing a seagull away from your food
– they’ll leave, fly around for bit, and wait until you’re gone before they
start getting at the leftovers. Similarly, the fleas on the dog would be killed
and washed away, but there are always new ones looking to hop on. Remember that
only 5% of the entire flea population in the area live on your dog; the rest of
them are just hanging around waiting for a free spot.
This is not to say that they’re ultimately useless – flea
shampoos are pretty useful! What you need to do is to follow up past the first
shampooing, and prevent more fleas from landing on your dog. More about this
part later, though.
And then there are the side-effects of using flea shampoos.
Some people think they’re pretty harmless, while others are convinced that the
chemical residue used to poison the fleas will still linger after the bath, and
would pose a problem when your dog licks himself. In my opinion, if there’s
residue on your dog it probably means you haven’t rinsed him well enough. Like
I said, fleas can and will start to reappear if you don’t do anything else
after that initial wash, so the supposed presence of residue doesn’t make
sense, or they wouldn’t be able to climb aboard so soon otherwise.
But of course, the pet industry has this well covered.
Here’s another one of their inventions.
Flea Dips
To me, the concept of a flea dip is pretty similar to dousing
your dog in insecticide. They smell, they have strange-sounding chemicals and
they obviously don’t look safe for licking. But do they prevent fleas? Oh yes,
they do.
Flea dips work by coating a dog’s skin in chemicals that are
harmful to fleas, killing them gradually upon contact. This sounds pretty good
on paper, but not so much when it comes to sloshing chemicals all over your
dog. It’s not very good for him in the long run, is it?
This is another dilemma that dog owners face – do I want to
give my dog a flea dip and be reassured that they won’t come jumping back, or
forgo the potentially poisonous treatment and look for another way? It pretty
much depends on your opinion on the subject, and how severe the problem is.
The good thing about a flea dip is that if you really,
really want fleas to get lost, you can turn up the potency as much as you want.
The bad thing is, of course, the risk you take in your dog’s overall health if
you decide to press on. What I recommend is a dip with one of the milder versions
of the product once a week or less, and reinforce with another, less toxic
method. In this case, there is such a thing as ‘too much of a good thing’.
Flea dips are meant to be used on the entire body of the
dog, which makes sense – you don’t hose the kitchen down and call it a day
while the rest of the house is burning down, do you? However, people are
increasingly ditching this method of treatment in favour of another that’s
easier to apply and more effective in the long run, which will be the last one
for this article…
Topical ‘Spot-on’ Treatment
In my opinion, this is the ‘silver bullet’ of the whole
anti-flea market. The spot-on treatment has seen widespread use and is highly
recommended by some people, with decent sales statistics to show for it.
However, others aren’t that convinced that this is the treatment of choice for
fleas on dogs, and I’ll explain why.
Here’s how it works: The medicine comes in a little tube,
similar to a bottle of eye-drop solution or travel-sized toothpaste. The furs
of the dog are parted in order to expose the skin, and the contents – an oily
liquid substance – are emptied onto a single spot on the dog, preferably on the
shoulder-blades or another part where he can’t reach by licking.
The active ingredients found in the liquid will slowly be
worked into the natural oil that the dog skin secretes, and the substance will
slowly spread throughout the entire skin area. This substance is, of course,
poisonous to fleas, and after a while those that have been on the dog soon end
up dead.
Easy enough, isn’t it? You just unscrew the bottle cap,
squeeze out everything on one spot, and the medicine takes care of the rest. No
wonder people are scrambling to buy these once they get hit with a flea
problem.
The effectiveness of this method has been vouched for by
many people online. What I’ve gathered is that most prefer either Advantage® or
Frontline®, two brands of spot-on remedies, and they seem to deliver results
consistently on dogs that have severe cases of fleas. Therefore, it’s probably
safe to say that they’re proven to be effective in getting rid of the pests.
But just how safe are they? As you can tell, this question
is a majorly thorny issue. Many people have spoken out about the poisonous
effects of the spot-on treatment, usually highlighting the chemical contents of
the medicine as well as raising doubts about its delivery mechanism.
As a case in point, a few are rather vocal about a brand
called Bio Spot®, which sells the medicine at a significantly lower price.
Apparently, it’s proving to be more trouble than it’s worth, as reports have
surfaced about dogs having severe reactions to the medicine after it was
administered. Regardless of its validity, I personally think it’s enough to
steer clear from the brand, at least.
In Conclusion…
We’ve covered at least four methods of flea treatment in
this article in detail: the flea collar, the shampoo, the dip and the spot-on.
We’ve gone through the pros and cons for each method, and in so doing I hope
you have some idea of what to choose in regards to treating your dog.
But what did we really learn from this analysis? To tell the
truth, it’s probably the fact that all methods of flea treatment carry a
certain risk in them. This could be due to the nature of the remedy itself –
they’re all designed to be pesticides, and their primary aim is to eradicate
the bugs first and foremost. This doesn’t mean that they don’t take the dog’s
health and safety into consideration, but it most definitely means that
whatever rubbing or spraying on your dog isn’t exactly healthy for him.
In closing, I highly suggest that you take your time to
think seriously about which method you will eventually employ. Some are more
suitable in some situations than others, as well as for the severity of the
problem. Whatever you choose, I hope that it’ll help with your fight against
the fleas.
The next part of this series will focus on the next phase of
flea treatment: Cleaning up the home and surroundings, where 95% of the little
parasites live. If you want them out of your life permanently, I recommend
taking notes for this one.
