Flea and Tick Season is here!

Flea and Tick Season is here! 

Fleas have a 4 stage life cycle. First, the female lays eggs on the host (pet). The flea eggs mature into larvae after falling off the host. Then they become pupae. The pupae seek a host and if conditions are right they attach to a host and they will feed and mature into adult fleas, repeating the life cycle.

Luckily, treating your pet for fleas does not necessarily require an exterminator. It does, however require treatment as flea bites cause pets to develop itchy red crusted skin. They will need a flea treatment/ prevention for a period of time as well as a good cleaning (vacuuming) of all areas the pet has access to over a period of a few days. Immediately following the vacuuming, the bag must be discarded. The best thing to use for fleas is prevention! A proven product such as Revolution or Advantage is a simple monthly topical treatment to prevent fleas from colonizing to your pet in the first place.

Ticks live in grassy areas and wait for a host to walk past them. They will attach to the host and feed on the blood for a number of days.  Once they have had a full blood meal they then will drop off the host and find another host when they are hungry again. The trouble with ticks is that unless they are full, they are relatively small and might not necessarily be noticed by an owner until fully engorged. Ticks can transmit disease within 24 hours of attaching to a host and Lyme disease is transmissible to humans. Although you cannot necessarily “catch” Lyme disease from your dog, they can carry the Lyme infected tick into your home.

If your pet has been bitten by a tick we can either send the tick off for identification to see whether it is the type of tick that carries certain diseases and/ or run some blood work that tests for tick- borne diseases a period of time after the bite.

If your pet spends much of the spring /summer/fall months off leash or in wooded areas I generally recommend a tick preventative in addition to flea prevention. Bravecto is a great tick preventative product which is a given once every 3 months. To make giving it even easier, it is a beef flavoured chewable tablet!

Lexy, RVT