Flea control on other animals???

Last year and this year controlling fleas on my companion pets has been "horrible!" I tried all natural remedies, expensive flea control products, everything....and I am still battling fleas!!!! The vet told me to bathe my dogs in DAWN dish soap. I've been doing this along with sweeping the floors continuously, sleeping areas, etc. I have two large house cats that are like trying to bathe a BEAR!!!

Does anyone have any suggestions???? I am at my wits end!!!

Thanks and have a great day!
Dianne

dawn dish soap helps kill the fleas currently on your animals, but it's not a preventative or a deterrant. i have what my vet calls 'nuclear' fleas in my area, and i've had to cough up the money for the prescription pills from the vet. it was the only thing that really worked for my poor dog.

spraying your yard with flea killer spray can also really help, but if course if you have large amounts of property it may not really help that much.

One thing I use is a homemade flea salt scrub. It is 1 cup vinegar to 1 cup dish soap, and add table salt until it is scrub consistency. Then scrub well into pet's fur and let it sit on the animal for at least 5 minutes. The dishsoap kills adult fleas, the salt dries out the eggs, and the vinegar is a deterrent. I cannot guarantee how long it would deter the fleas for though. I usually bathe the pets then immediately treat the furniture and what not immediately after bathing. Good luck to you

Thanks for the advice. I have a rather large yard area, with connecting properties on both sides of me. I finally bought the prescription meds from the vet and keep up with the bathing, etc. I bought some essential oils and have been blending some with almond oil and spritzing my dogs with it. I really don't like to use chemicals on my animals. Hopefully, this coming winter will be harsh enough to kill off the fleas for next year.
Have a great day!
Dianne

Likely your yard has been infested. There are natural flea predators, natural sprays, and outright pest control companies with chemicals to knock down the population because no amount of removing them off your animals will stop them then and the items that kill after biting become useless since there is a never ending supply to keep biting. The flea meds, or any external pest control, only work if they are acting on a contained population. If the population is constantly resupplied they won't do anything. Not because they aren't killing fleas or you have any special type of flea but because you just have more fleas breeding elsewhere than you can ever kill. We are planning to spread a variety of parasitic nematodes and bacteria in our yard next spring that should kill fleas, ticks, pest mites, japanese beetles, june bugs, and several other less serious house and garden pests. It can take a couple years for them to fully populate but the right combo will wipe out all pests forever without harming more useful insects or soil microbes.

Comfortis - prescription from the vet - is the ONLY thing I have found to keep my pets and home flea free. And giving it to the cat is NOT a treat but I have found that one pill keeps them flea free not for ONE month, but closer to THREE!

Doesn't work on ticks though.

Bathing in dish soap will only work if you do it every day for weeks and shave the adults. I've done it before with a cat and her 3 kittens. Shaved the mom, gave her multiple baths, she hated me for a very long time for it, bathed the kits every day and plucked the fleas away 1 by 1.

You could try Diatomaceous Earth you need to rub it into their fur and make sure they are coated in it so it'd be messy :/

if all else fails and you have to forgo natural remedies, some ivermectin will do the trick for sure.

If it's in the surrounding area nothing will do the trick for sure except ongoing treatment of the area instead of the animals. We never solved it with fleas at our first house even after we went from having to bathe cats to things like frontline and advantage first coming out with full effectiveness then and I went through every topical, oral, DE, sevin dust, and herbal repellant on those dang rat mites until I was sleeping in the DE on the bed to stop looking like I had scabies but they live in the yard. If a host they like goes by and then comes inside we get more. You can possibly make them die fast enough they aren't obvious but the animal is still suffering bites and it becomes obvious when it hits your small animals because the number of bites can create anemia or allergic reactions (I found some gerbils in seizures) even if every single one that is biting is instantly dying. My mom also had a dog with a flea allergy so killing after the bite did zip and we suddenly realized just how many fleas there were biting our animals even when we didn't see them at her house. I took some small animals to her house temporarily when we had a flood in a basement apartment and ended up losing them to flea bites while on 2 veterinary acquired systemic flea treatments to kill them. They are simply infinite and whether you knock down the number with meds enough to not notice them irritating you or not they are still biting more preferred hosts before dying. I can say from experience eventually you stop reacting to the never ending bites when the pests are dying all the time before repeat biting and there's no more obvious symptom of scratching but that doesn't mean if you aren't covered in fur you don't see all the little marks on human skin that add up to eventual vague symptoms, both physical and behavioral, from the constant stress on the body. Fleas are bad enough but being surrounded by a stable population of tropical rat mites should only be given to people who deserve a fate worse than death.

This is what we use. Have used it for years and have found it very effective against fleas. Doesn't do much against ticks. It's listed now at $10 for a quart and that will last us for several years (3 dogs and a cat). It's the same active ingredient as Advantage (Imidacloprid). It's just formulated as a drench so it's a bit messier to work with. You apply it along their back. I use a syringe (without the needle).

I got this and the dosage from a coonhound forum.

Compare-N-Save Systemic Tree and Shrub Insect Drench, 32-Ounce

The dosage is

Cats < 9 lbs 2.5ml
Cats >= 9 lbs 5ml

Dogs 21-55 lbs 15.5ml
Dogs 55-80 lbs 25ml
Dogs >80lbs 30 ml

I do have a large dog (about 120lbs) and I give him about 40ml but that wasn't included in original dosage.