Flea, fleas, fleas
Horrible, little creatures. They bite our cats and dogs and make them really, really itchy. Sometimes so much so, that they pull their fur out, and lick themselves until their skin is raw.
And they multiply!
If you see one flea – chances are, there are loads.
Did you know that one female flea can lay over 2000 eggs in her lifetime, and up to 50 each day?
More on all that in a bit.
But before we go into preventing and getting rid off fleas, I want to ask you this:
How much of a problem are fleas actually?
At Pets Relaxed we prescribe very few flea treatments.
Our own pets (Patch, the dog and Filou, the cat) haven’t had a flea treatment in years.
They just don’t get fleas.
So what’s this obsession with applying regular flea treatments?
Here’s my opinion, based on many years of treating pets, and having my own:
The vast majority of pets around here, in the North of England, just don’t get fleas very often at all.
For them, there’s absolutely no need to give regular flea treatment as a preventative.
It’s a waste of money for you and an unnecessary chemical burden for their bodies. Let alone having to remember to give the treatment, and the stress it causes to those pets that really don’t like having it.
There are a few things to remember though:
1. Some pets do pick up fleas regularly. Cats are often the culprits, especially those that are outside a lot. And dogs often pick up fleas from hedgehogs, when they find one in the garden and try to play with them.
2. If one household pet has fleas, they tend to jump onto the other pets, and sometimes the humans, too.
3. Fleas multiply fast! As above, one female flea can lay around 2000 eggs in her life and up to 50 each day. And once those eggs have hatched, those new fleas will do the same. It’s easy to see how you can quickly get a flea infestation – and that can be difficult to get rid off.
All of this can happen, whether you use regular flea treatments or not (but it’s a lot less likely when you do). However:
4. Many flea treatments that used to work well, don’t anymore.
Many, many times, people use their tried and trusted flea treatments, and think their pet’s itching must have a different reason than fleas (because they’ve already treated for those) – but on closer inspection, the fleas are still there.
Fleas are getting more and more resistant to flea treatments.
It’s no wonder – the more we use something as a whole community, the more likely it is that resistance develops. And flea treatments are used all the time.
No flea treatment comes with a guarantee that it will work!
The longer a flea treatment has been around, the less likely it is to still be effective.
5. Tapeworm:
Fleas can carry stages of tapeworm inside them, and when your pet grooms themselves and eats a flea, they can get tapeworms that way.
When your pet has fleas, we always recommend treating them for tape worm, or doing a worm count.
6. Cat Scratch Disease:
This is a disease that people can potentially get from fleas.
It’s caused by a bacterium, Bartonella henselae, which can be present in flea poo.
You could also get it through cat scratches (hence the name), or if you have a wound and your cat licks it.
Signs are swollen lymph nodes, fever and bumps under the skin (papule).
In practice though, this is either very rare, or usually so mild, that people don’t even know they had it.
So far, while I have seen plenty of pets with fleas, I have never seen or personally heard of a person who contracted a disease from them.
Ok, so maybe it’s a good idea to use good quality, effective flea products year round after all then?
For some people, that’s the way to go, and that’s absolutely fine.
Here are some more points to consider though:
Flea products are not harmless.
They are terrible for our wildlife
More and more studies show the impact their having on insects, invertebrates, fish and birds.
One dose of Imidaclopride (active ingredient in Advantage and many others) for a large dog would be enough to kill 25 million bees!!*
Fipronil (in Frontline) and Imidacloprid have been banned from use in agriculture, due to their toxicity – but are being used all the time on pets.
It gets into the environment via dogs swimming or being bathed, via their shedded fur, their bedding being washed, and via pet owners washing their hands.
Side effects
While most pets seem to cope absolutely fine with flea treatments, some do have reactions to them – and they can be severe.
I have seen plenty of pets, often cats, but also dogs, that got wobbly and uncoordinated shortly after the flea treatment was applied.
Flea treatments usually affect the fleas’ nervous system. And while the manufacturers assure us, that the nervous system of fleas is different to that of dogs and cats, clearly there is something going on there for some pets.
How many pets have their nervous system affected in a smaller way, that we don’t necessarily see. Is this safe in the long run?
And for some mind boggling reason, the flea products that work best these days, are combined with tick treatments – and those come with their own set of potential side effects (often worse than those of the flea products themselves).
Indirect side effects
Biome4Pets have found that some flea treatments can lead to an imbalance in the pet’s gut microbiome.
And it’s our pets’ liver that has to metabolise the flea treatments, putting an extra strain on this organ- probably fine if given occasionally, but maybe problematic if we done regularly throughout the pet’s life.
In a nutshell:
Pro: Conventional flea treatments are powerful and usually eliminate fleas quickly and effectively.
Much less of a chance to end up with a flea infestation that can be difficult to get rid off.
Less risk of picking up tapeworms.
Especially useful for pets that are allergic to fleas and/ or get bad skin irritation from them – and in homes where fleas like to jump from pets to humans.
Con: Usually not needed on a regular basis
Negative impact on wildlife
Potential side effects for pets, visible and invisible
So what do we do?
As you can see, there’s no simple answer, and you’ll have to make up your own mind what works best for you.
Here’s what we have done until recently with Filou and Patch:
– We check our pets regularly and thoroughly for fleas (flea combs are great for this).
– On the rare occasion that one of them had fleas, we used a prescription vet flea treatment on both of them – because we know that fleas will jump from one to the other.
– On the even rarer occasion that humans got bitten too, we also treated the house with a veterinary chemical flea spray.
(This only happened once and I hated it! I didn’t see any other little creatures, like spiders etc, for months, which made it very clear that not only the fleas got killed, but everything else too!)
The more I learn about how toxic these treatments are, the less I want to use them – so for me they are for emergencies only.
Instead, we are now using natural flea deterrents on a regular basis.
They’re usually not very good at killing fleas once they’re there – but they make it much less likely that fleas will want to come in the first place.
It seems to be very individual which products work for which pets, so you may have to try a few to find one that’s right for your pets.
Because our pets are not prone to picking up fleas, I might not know if the deterrents I’m using are actually working, but that’s ok.
Here are a couple of deterrents that my clients have found useful:
Biospotix collars, spot ons and house spray
Billy No Mates
Neem Oil
Cedarwood Essential oil (diluted appropriately)
There are many more!
We will still use chemical flea products if we see more than one or two fleas – but hopefully that will happen even less often now.
What’s your approach to flea treatments for your pets?
* https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/243875/toxic-flea-tick-treatments-polluting-uk/
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