Flea and Tick Season - Protect Your Pets

When it's not flea and tick season, it's easy to forget what a pain (quite literally) these nasty little insects can be. You may wonder what the big deal is - don't all cats and dogs get fleas? Yes, they do! But it's not just a nuisance. Protecting your pet from fleas and ticks can be the difference between the life and death of your pet, and the health and well-being of your pets and family. Dangers of Infestation Fleas and ticks are small critters with a big impact, because they have the advantage of numbers - big numbers. Ticks can carry illnesses like Lyme disease, which can affect both humans and animals. Fleas can transmit tapeworms and heartworms through their bites. Left untreated, heartworm can be fatal. And let's not forget that fleas can infest your home. If your pets shed, flea eggs can come off on the hair. Clumps of shed animal hair can then become breeding grounds for fleas. And they are hard to get rid of - you often need multiple, professional, and often expensive applications of powerful pesticide to get the infestation under control. Prevention Options Prevention is the best approach to protecting your pets from fleas and ticks. Here are some of the options. -Spot-on treatments go between the shoulders or on the back of the neck for cats, and on the back of the neck or down the back of dogs. These can get expensive if you get them from your vet and if you have multiple pets, but there are affordable options. But there are lower-cost, over-the-counter options available these days. Spot-on, topical flea prevention can contain pesticides or you might prefer a more natural spot-on (which is also available). They usually both repel and kill fleas and ticks. They need to be applied on a monthly basis. -Flea collars can help repel fleas and ticks, but they also need to be kept fresh and replaced regularly. -Comb your pet every day with a flea and tick comb. This helps prevent re-infestation between applications of the flea medication. Treatment Options Sometimes, it happens - your dog or cat gets infested with fleas, or a tick attaches itself to your pet. There are things you can do to get rid of the infestation. Here are some options. -Oral flea killers encourage the fleas to bite your pet, and then the fleas die almost immediately. Obviously, this does not prevent fleas from re-infesting your pet a couple of days later, so if you use this option, follow up with a prevention like a topical spot-on. -Remove the tick from your pet using tweezers and topical anesthetic. Keep the removed tick in a zip-top bag and freeze it. This will kill the tick but preserve it in case you need to identify it later. (If illness develops, it's important to be able to identify the tick.) -Flea powders and sprays are also effective at killing off an infestation. But once again, a preventative measure needs to be taken as well to prevent re-infestation.