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Found spraying the whole yard the dog accesses does reduce the amount of fleas.
Other helpful approach is covering all the carpeting and furnishings in diatomaceous earth. Sprinkle it everywhere from a talcum powder container. Would not hurt to wear a face mask to do this as it irritates lungs. Leave it on for at least 2 weeks and just walk it into carpet before you vacuum. Does not harm animals or humans but any insects that land on that carpet will be killed. Will stay until carpet is cleaned, then need to redo it. Wash all bedding in warm water when you treat. If you have stuffed animals for kids, or thrown pillows you need to put in trashbag with flea spray for 2 weeks to get rid of all fleas.
The expensive flea stuff has stopped working in lots of places. Can switch to the cheaper stuff if you live in expensive area....If in poor area, need to use expensive flea drops stuff.
Is really helpful to wash pet every 10 days in tub with 2-3 inches of water and get pet really wet, soap is optional. The fleas will hop off and drown. The lifecycle of fleas is 10 days from birth to death, then another batch hatches and it all starts again. So just keep washing dog/cat to kill next batch of fleas.
DE is great, BUT itll clog vacumes SUPER quick and EVERYTHING will be and feel dusty...
if you have any kind of dust allergy itll set you off everytime you sit on the couch ect...
I use it all the time in our chicken coop, goat stalls ect, but I tried it in the house once and my usually very mild allergies whent crazy...
I prefer a permethrin or premethrin spray for indoors...
I have also heard that Advantage is now flea-resistant, but I always use Frontline, as it gets rid of ticks as well.
Do you have neighbors with dogs? You may want to check with them. In my former home, I had neighbors with 2 pitbulls that (yay) they got rid of. Then, my dogs, who were on "winter hiatus" from flea meds, got fleas & tapeworm! WTH! That was when I learned that hungry fleas can jump great distances...the neighbors were slobs who neglected their dogs, then the fleas came to the nearest source (my dogs) when they dumped the pitts.
After treating the tapeworm, I got the dogs back on Frontline, used "flea bombs" in the house, problem solved. I had 1/4 acre yard but did not have to do anything out there... suspect that once my dogs were back on Frontline, the fleas bit them & died.
For the last week or so, I've been dealing with fleas on Ryder. Pretty mild case, I think, and we seem to be okay right now.
I've vacuumed like crazy, every day, multiple times per day.
Nexgard -- he wasn't on it before; now he is
Trip to the groomer
Have washed everything (bed linens, couch blankets) multiple times
Diatomaceous earth on the carpets, especially on the spots where he likes to lie
Lavender essential oil on his collar, plus a concoction of lavender essential oil and distilled water in a spray bottle (spritzed over his usual hang-out spots)
check this stuff out, its the only thing that got rid of the fleas we had..
You can also mix it in the pet food, and it will deworm the pet. I've heard stories of people doing the same thing where they worked around a lot of animals. I make sure there's plenty of gravy to mix the power with too since dogs in particular are quick eaters. Getting cats to eat it has been more difficult, but a dusting on dry food seems to work. They only smell the food.
You can put a light dusting on cats too, just rub it into the skin. It won't eliminate fleas but will reduce them considerably.
I have wanted to try DE in his food as a de-wormer, but I'm a little afraid to. Halloween of 2014, Ryder ate something out of a bush -- I think it was nasty poop from one of the feral cats in our neighborhood -- and 30 hours later he was in the hospital with sepsis. He almost died. (And the hospitalization cost $1200.)
While I am 99% sure it was the nasty stuff he ate -- I scraped as much of it out of his mouth as I could, and it was mushy and foul-smelling, so certainly was "bad" -- it just so happens that I had ALSO just started adding some DE to his food a couple days before.
So there's that 1% concern that the DE contributed to his problems. (And yep, I'm sure what I was using was food-grade, unless the packaging is lying.)
I have read online, though, that breeders and others do use DE internally without problems.
I had to use trifextis but b4 had comfortis which did work. I was using frontline as many more were and saw fleas on the dog. She was mostly an indoor dog so I did it with a flea comb and dawn suds and found many. The frontline spray worked
but I needed better. Found this spray but don't have a dog now cb80 from do your own pest control. not on the dog but may kill any in rugs etc.
You can make your own homemade dog treats with liver and garlic. I don't have my recipe handy, but our Shepherd loved them. Garlic is a natural repellent to fleas and the like.
The most difficult aspect of the flea war is the long length of time that has to go into it. Has to. It's more than just the different products. Those darn bugs can quickly hide when they feel the vibration of a vacuum coming. And they leave their eggs everywhere. However, constant vigilance is what wins the war.
A few years ago I had an infestation. The war took a month of tedious daily vacuuming of floors, baseboards, and furniture, and the daily washing of every pet bed and throw rug. Once a week I used Adams products (powders and sprays).
On day one the dog and cats were treated with Capstar and each given a bath with Dawn. A week later they were all treated topically. Daily I used a flea comb, dispensing the fleas into a bucket of hot water and Dawn.
We did have the yard treated (nematodes I think, but I don't remember now).
By about the second week there were fewer fleas found on my pets, and by the third I wasn't finding any. However, I continued for another week of vacuuming, washing, combing ... somewhat the same concept of finishing out a prescription of antibiotics even when you're feeling good.
At the time it was such drudgery, but in the end all of it was worth every minute of it - I came out the victor.
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