Vet Flea Products For Dogs

If your dog has fleas it can cause them to scratch and potentially damage their skin. At the same time though it can also cause concern that it can spread to humans and even transfer disease and generally is not a desirable state of affairs. Knowing how to keep your dog ‘flea free’ then is an important skill for any owner. Thankfully it is also a fairly simple task.

First of all, if you own a dog you need to know what to look for with fleas. The first sign that your pet may have fleas is that they scratch and itch a lot, this is a fairly obvious sign as the main symptom of fleas is to cause you skin to itch (and sometimes hurt). Alternatively a dog might bite their own skin as a way to itch it and offer themselves some relief, or even lick themselves. If you dog seems unable to sit still and seems very uncomfortable then you might have a case of fleas on your hands. Similarly if they have any unusual cuts or broken skin on them, this might be a symptom of repeated scratching as dogs will often scratch themselves until they bleed. Even if you don’t catch them in the act of actually itching themselves then, blood can be a sign that they have been at some point.

Next then you should examine your dog’s skin and fur. Fleas are tiny black creatures with lots of legs that can jump high and you might be able to spot these just by looking. More often though people identify fleas by the eggs they leave on the skin – small white oval shapes that should stand out well on dogs with darker coloured hair.

Once you’ve identified a flea problem on your dog there are several things you can do to help them. The first is, strangely enough, to clean the house, their sleeping basket/beanbag and anything else that may have had contact with their skin and is fluffy or furry. The reason for this is that fleas can live in carpet, and if you spend ages washing your dog only for the fleas to jump back on from the carpet then you’ll have wasted your time. Wash and vacuum thoroughly then before you do anything else.

Next you need to wash your dog which will get rid of as many as possible. Use lots of shampoo – or better yet shampoos designed for combating fleas as there are a lot of flea products for dogs that come in the form of a shampoo. Use this with a fine comb and wash more thoroughly than you normally would. This will act to poison the fleas, kill the eggs and brush and wash them off.

However this on its own will likely not be enough and you will probably need several washes. There are many other orally administered flea products for dogs which you can use in conjunction with a shampoo which usually recommend a few days to kick into action.