Frequently asked Questions

Fleas can enter the home in many ways, even if your pet is not or only rarely allowed outside. They can hop in from your yard, hitch a ride on you, or even be left over from previous inhabitants (larvae can remain dormant for astonishingly long periods of time under a variety of conditions).

Since fleas can be carriers for worms and diseases, keeping your pet flea-free helps to keep it healthy. In addition, many pets and people are allergic to flea-bites.

To check if your pet has fleas, part its hair and look for:

• Small bits of brown “dust,” attached to the fur itself. The fleas excrete digested blood. See if the dust dissolves into a red liquid upon contact with a wet paper towel.
• Skin Irritation: flea bites or scratching and biting may leave red, irritated skin, and even bald patches in bad cases.
• Small, fast moving brown shapes are fleas.
• Or, use a flea comb and see what you get.You may also see “flea dust,” fleas, or even larvae on your pet’s bedding.
• Dried blood in its ears may indicate ear mites and you should consult your vet to find out what the problem is.

Conventional wisdom and older studies that studied rat fleas suggest that fleas spend only part of their time on your pet; this is not true. There are different varieties of fleas, and the primary flea infesting dogs and cats in North America and large areas of Europeis the cat flea (yes on dogs, too). This flee, not as well studied as the rat flea actually spends all of its adult life on the host under normal conditions. Eggs are laid on the host and drop off into the environment. Thus you can often find eggs wherever your pets spend time: on their bedding, through the house, in the backyard.

A good preventive method is to put down towels everywhere your pet normally lies and then wash those towels once a week. Deposited flea eggs are therefore cleaned out regularly. Regular vacuuming and emptying of the vacuum bag also helps, independently of any method or methods you choose to do, since that eliminates or reduces food sources for the larvae.

There are several ways to kill or discourage fleas. Some are synthetic chemicals, some are considered “natural”, and both work with varying degrees. No one method is 100% effective, and you will almost always have to combine several approaches to get the results you want. Some methods are applicable for indoor pets, but useless for indoor/outdoor pets. You need to choose the set of approaches that best addresses your situation.

Keep in mind that there are regional differences among fleas: what works well in one area may not work well in other areas. You should consult a LOCAL vet, vet tech, or dog groomer to see what is known to be effective in your area. If you think you’re getting biased opinions, ask several people and see what they concur on. Don’t rely on the products available at your local store; there are too many that are just distributed nationally.

Finally, you may find that you need to switch your approaches around from year to year. If you use the same product several years in a row, you may find the effectiveness lessened. Additionally, some years are worse than others, depending on the previous winter, and you may need to strike earlier with stronger methods some years and relax a bit more with milder methods another year.

You must keep in mind the life cycle of the flea. From egg to larvae to adult is between three to six weeks: to get rid of fleas in your house, you must break this cycle. As a practical matter, this means you will almost certainly have to repeat your efforts in several weeks to catch the fleas from the larvae that didn’t get destroyed the first time around. This is also why it is important to address the problem of the eggs and larvae as well as the adult fleas.

After taking a blood meal, fleas either lay eggs on your pet or in its surrounding environment. Eggs on your pet are often shed onto its bedding or into the carpet. A pair of fleas may produce 20,000 fleas in 3 months. Eggs hatch after 2-12 days into larvae that feed in the environment — generally on digested blood from adult fleas and other food matter in their environment. The food required at this stage is microscopic, and even clean carpets often offer plenty of food to the larvae. The larvae are little wiggles about 3-4 millimeters long, you may see some if you inspect your pet’s bedding carefully. Larvae molt twice within 2-200 days and the older larvae spin a cocoon in which they remain for one week to one year. When in this cocoon stage the young flea is invulnerable to any kind of insecticide and to low, even freezing, temperatures. Only sufficient warmth and the presence of a host can cause them to emerge. This long cocooning period explains why fleas are so difficult to eradicate.

Flea collars aren’t effective and may even be bad for your pet’s health. Some of the herbal ones smell nice and that’s about it.

Ultrasonic and electronic flea collars are not known to work.

We know that Catandog’s works and has a 95% effectivennes.

Please read the documents in the Medical Findings Sections

Ticks are in the phylum of animals called Arthropoda (jointed appendage). This phylum of animals is the largest in the animal kingdom. There are over 850 different species of ticks, and they parasitize every class of terrestrial vertebrate animal, including amphibians.

Ticks are small rounded arachnids that cling to one spot and do not move. They have inserted their head under the skin and are engorging themselves on the blood. Diseases carried by ticks means that you should have yourself or your pets checked after you find ticks. On the one hand, ticks are a little easier to deal with since they remain outdoors, and do not infest houses the way fleas do; on the other hand, they carry more dangerous diseases and are harder to find.

Ticks are the most important arthropod in transmitting diseases to domestic animals and run a close second to mosquitoes in arthropod borne human diseases. They transmit a greater variety of infectious agents than any other type of arthropod. Ticks can cause disease and illness directly. They are responsible for anemia due to blood loss, dermatosis due to salivary secretions, and ascending tick paralysis due to neurotoxins in the salivary secretions. They also can be the vector of other diseases.

There are two basic types of ticks. Soft ticks, the argasids, are distinguished by their soft, leathery cuticle and lack of scutum. They can be recognized easily by their subterminal mouthparts that are on the underside of the tick. Soft ticks when engorged with blood blow up like a balloon. Soft ticks are fast feeders, being able to tank up in a matter of hours.

Hard ticks, the Ixodids, have a hard plate on the dorsal surface and have terminal mouthparts. When attaching, a tick will slice open the skin with the mouthparts and then attach itself. They also secrete a cement that hardens and holds the tick onto the host. Hard ticks are slow feeders, taking several days to finish their bloodmeal.

During feeding a tick may extract up to 8 ml of blood, they can take 100X their body weight in blood. Interestingly, they concentrate the blood during feeding and will return much of the water to the host while losing some by transpiration through the cuticle.

All ticks have four life cycle stages. Adult ticks, produce eggs. A female tick can produce up to 20,000 eggs. Mating usually occurs on a host, after which the female must have a blood meal in order for the eggs to develop. Ixodid ticks are unusual in that mating does not occur on the host. The eggs are laid in the soil or leaf litter after the female drops off the host. These eggs hatch into a stage known as the larva. The larva is the smallest stage and can be recognized by having only 3 pairs of legs. These “seed ticks” are produced in great numbers. They must find a host and take a blood meal in order to molt to the next stage called the nymph. If the nymph can feed on a host, it will develop into the adult tick.

Ticks vary greatly in how long this cycle takes and the number of hosts involved. Some ticks are one host ticks; the entire cycle occurs on that one host. Others use two hosts, some three and some of the soft ticks are multi-host ticks.

Ticks require high humidity and moderate temperature. Juvenile ticks usually live in the soil or at ground level. They will then climb up onto a blade of grass or the leaf of a plant to await a potential host. They will sense the presence of a host and begin the questing behavior, standing up and waving their front legs. They are able to sense a vibration, a shadow, a change in CO2 level, or temperature change. When unsuccessful in their “quest” they become dehydrated and will climb back down the plant to the ground to become rehydrated. Then back up the plant, etc., until they are successful or they die. Some ticks have been known to live for over 20 years and they can live for a very long time without food. Their favored habitat is old field-forest ecozone. One way to cut down the number of ticks is to keep the area mowed.

When you find a tick, use tweezers to pick up the body and pull s-l-o-w-l-y and gently, and the mouthparts will release. You should see a small crator in your dog’s skin, if you see what looks like black lines, you’ve left the head of the tick in. At this point, if your dog is mellow enough, you should try and pick it out. Otherwise, you may need to take your pet into the vet, as the head parts will lead to an infection. Ticks carry a lot of rickettsial diseases, including Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, so you should wash your hands thoroughly with soap after handling a tick. Some veterinarians will put on gloves, smear one finger with a bit of mineral oil and massage the protruding part of the tick for a minute or so. The tick will back out. Tips:

• Don’t use any of the folklore remedies (matches, cigarettes, pins, gasoline) that will irritate the tick. They increase the likelihood that the tick will “spit up” in you, which increases the risk of disease.
• Oil is not effective because the breathing requirements of the tick are so small it could last hours covered with oil.
• The mouthpiece is barbed rather than spiralled, so trying to rotate the tick out doesn’t provide any advantage.
• The preferred method is to use special tweezers designed for that purpose, and pull straight out.

Lyme disease is usually carried by tiny deer ticks (two other kinds of ticks have also been identified as carriers) , which are the size of the head of a pin. You must look yourself or your pet over very carefully to find these kind of ticks. Other ticks can be as large as peppercorns. This can vary depending on whether or not the tick has yet engorged itself — the deer tick can be as large as the more familiar Dog Tick if it has had time to feed. So if you are in doubt, preserve the tick in rubbing alcohol and have your vet take a look at it.

To dispose of the tick, drop it into alcohol to kill it, then dispose of it. Flushing them down the toilet WILL NOT KILL THEM. Squishing them with a thumbnail is not recommended, and is not easy anyway. You might save the tick in a jar of alcohol for identification, to help decide whether possible infection has occurred.

Adult ticks can remain on deer and other mammals through the fall and winter. If you spend a lot of time outdoors during this period, be sure to check yourself, your family and your pets daily for ticks. If you hunt or trap, check areas where you cache your game for ticks that may have fallen off during handling.

A helpful practice is to wear long pants tucked into white socks; this way they crawl up the *outside* of your pants and you can spot them in the field. Also wear a hat: they can drop from trees onto your head.

Ticks like long grass on the edges of woods (especially deer ticks) They crawl up onto the grass blades and cling to you as you walk past.

If you comb your pet with a wide tooth flea comb right after taking a walk, chances are you will find unattached ticks crawling around.

Ticks don’t attach themselves right away: they look around for good real estate. It’s much easier to remove ticks before they attach, and easier to remove newly attached ticks than ones that have been feeding for a while.