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This Domain is For Sale,
Serious Inquiries please contact Marie Tabsch
Actually, the title is a little misleading; it is almost always summertime around here. So, in essence, we are dealing with ticks and fleas year round. Although the weapons have improved dramatically, the adversaries are still fighting. And you can expect them to be around for at least all your life time. You see, fleas and ticks have been around for hundreds of millions of years. We'll be lucky to do so well as a species. Nonetheless, with the weapons we have today, no animal should suffer from fleas and ticks. Fleas have adapted to our South Florida environment. They thrive in weather that is a about 75% humidity and 75 degrees. It is interesting to me that fleas have adapted to live in our houses as well. Surely, there were no single family dwellings around 400 million years ago so they are remarkable little suckers. They, like other insects, can and have developed resistance to some of the more potent insecticides like malathion and dursban so if you are using these outside in your yard you should rotate them (in my opinion you should stay away from these altogether, especially dursban which has been in the news lately). Besides just being annoying fleas can cause medical problems, some of which can be serious and life threatening. Puppies and kittens are particularly at risk for developing flea bite anemia; the fleas simply suck enough blood out to kill the pet. Seventy-two females can suck 1 mL, or 20 drops, of blood per day; that's 1/3 of a drop per flea, per day! Fleas also carry larval stages of tapeworms which the pets get by eating the fleas. They are also suspected in carrying agents for diseases like haemobartonella. However, the majority of problems are due to allergic reactions to their bite. There is something in the saliva that drives some dogs and cats crazy. Incessant scratching ensues. There are a number of things you can do to kill fleas and keep them off your pets. I'm going to keep it simple because that is what has happened in our veterinary practice since the advent of Program, Top Spot, and Advantage. GONE from our shelves are the following: flea sprays, flea foams, flea powders, foggers, household and yard spray kits, boric acid powders for the house, flea collars, and insect growth hormone products. Why? Because the aforementioned "big 3" work so well; period. We used to go through bottle after bottle of droncit, a medication used to treat tapeworms; now we give maybe one shot per week; maybe. So, how do the big 3 work? Advantage and Top Spot are new breeds of insecticide that are very safe. You apply them to the skin (not hair) between the shoulder blades once a month. They do not need to be reapplied between baths. Program is birth control for pets and it is taken orally once a month (or injected for cats); it has now been combined with heartworm preventative for dogs called sentinel. Trust me, fleas need birth control too; check this out: one female flea reproducing can account for 20,000 adult and 160,000 preadults in only 60 days. After a flea eats blood from a pet on Program her eggs are sterile and cannot hatch. For it to be effective all the pets in your house need to be on it because it makes little sense to have fleas bite one of your pets and end up sterile yet have the other fleas bite a pet and be able to lay eggs. I tell my clients the following: "for a few bucks a month we can pretty much guarantee you will never have to spray, fog, or bomb your house with dangerous insecticides again." "When can we get started?" is the usual response. Got it? So, take 1 adult killer and 1 flea birth control pill each month and call me in the morning. Next up are the ticks. Ticks are supposed to be cyclical meaning that we should only have a bad year every 3 or 4 years. Not true out here in Kendall; we have had a bad year every year since Hurricane Andrew. Ticks cause damage by their irritating bites, by carrying various viral, bacterial, and rickettsial diseases, and by causing paralysis. They also carry Lyme disease which can be transmitted to people. Lyme disease doesn't appear to be a big problem in South Florida though. Ticks are a little harder than fleas to kill. They are a little grosser too. People really squirm when they get a tick crawling on them while they seem to be able to tolerate a flea on their hide somewhat easier. Fortunately, there are some good products for ticks as well. Top Spot and Frontline are the same product from the same company but are applied differently. Top Spot is applied between the shoulder blades while Frontline is sprayed all over the body. I call Top Spot a "preventative" for ticks because it does not do as good a job on ticks as does Frontline. Frontline simply covers more area and if you are trying to kill ticks you need to cover more area. You need to spray the toes, the ears, and any other small cracks ticks can get into. Preventic collars also work very well. They contain a chemical that is used to treat demodectic mange and it prevents the tick from burying its' head into the skin. Old school insecticides like pyrethrins and permethrin work well on ticks also; just don't use permethrins on cats. And finally, you can spray your yard or house with dursban or malathion which you will probably need to do if you are having tick problems. Lastly, there is a new once-a-month topical product from Pfizer called revolution that kills almost everything under the sun yet is extremely safe (ie. heartworms, intestinal parasites, fleas, ticks, ear mites, scabies). Sounds too good to be true and it is so new most of us don't have much experience with it so stay tuned. Battling fleas and ticks used to be a war; now it is more like a skirmish. For fleas we always said use a 3 prong attack: yard, house, and pet. Now I say 2: adulticide and birth control. Call me a revolutionary. -Dr. Stephen M. Sheldon, D.V.M. practices at and owns Hammocks Veterinary Hospital in Miami, Florida. A University of Florida graduate, he is President of the South Florida Veterinary Medical Association, and a member of the Veterinary Cancer Society. He can be reached at (305) 388-0880. Visit his website at http://www.hammocksvet.com/. |
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