Fleas, Ticks, Worms, and other Parasites of Dogs, Cats, and Other Pets

Some General Comments

coming soon...this page undergoing re-writing...it was originally a price list of the better flea and tick products we carried at our clinic. Soon I hope to provide more useful information...meanwhile, peek and see what I've boldly written so far.

Did you know that boy fleas have ... how should I put this ... 2 weenies? Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this page for some more interesting facts taken from Joy Masoff's " The Encyclopedia of Everything Yucky"

Some General Information: A little about Fleas, Ticks, Intestinal Worms, Tape Worms, Heart Worms, Coccidia, Giardia, Cryptosporidia, Lice, Mites, and Flukes

Fleas

Fleas, of course, are aggravating little insects that carry disease, frequently cause intense skin reactions and allergies in our pets, and can be extremely difficult to control. Although, the newer flea products are working so well that most flea problems are now fairly easy to control. This is simplified, but the important things to know about fleas is that each flea can lay hundreds of eggs. Fleas like to lay their eggs on damp ground or in cracks and crevices. They prefer to lay eggs when the humidity is high and the temperature is 65-80 F (typical of most US homes) . Adult fleas can live up to two months off a pet and up to year on a pet. The eggs hatch in 2-12 days into tiny larvae. The larvae live in your house and yard and eat dust and dander. They grow and molt a couple of times over a period of 10-200 days, depending on food supply, humidity, and temperature. Then they pupate. The pupa part of their life cycle can last from 7 days to 1 year. They wait until conditions are right and until there's mammalian prey (cats, dogs, and humans). The take home message here is that if you see a fair number of fleas on your cat or dog, know that you have hundreds, maybe thousands of tiny flea eggs, larvae, and pupae around. To solve a serious flea problem you're going to have to go after the eggs, larvae, and pupae as well the adult fleas on your pet. The trouble is that they've become resistant to the pesticides we've been using for the last 25 years. Luckily, we now have new pesticides that they haven't become resistant to, and in most cases are working really well. See below about Frontline Plus, Revolution, and Program.

Ticks

The type of ticks we deal with most often in pet medicine are various types of so-called "hard" ticks and each of the different species and subspecies have similar life cycles. Adults, which can live for over a year, lay up to 8000 eggs on moist ground. The eggs hatch in 2-7 weeks. The larvae (seed ticks) , which cling to tall grass or low bushes attach themselves to passing pets or other small mammals and feed for several days. Then they fall off and rest for 6-90 depending on weather conditions etc. After molting into nymphs they again attach themselves to the nearest mammal that walks by and feed again for several days. Then they fall off and rest for another 3-15 weeks. Finally, they molt again into adults that attach themselves again to the most convenient mammal, have sex, feast on blood, and start laying eggs again.

None of this information is likely to help you much other than to know that any place with damp soil, long grass, or low bushes could harbor thousands of seed ticks, nymphs, and adult ticks waiting to attach themselves to you or your pets. Spraying such areas with pesticides help, but resistance is a problem. Resistance is also a problem with the majority of sprays , dips, and collars claiming to solve your tick problem. Preventic Brand collars seem to work better than any others I've tried, but only for 3-5 weeks in our area of the country...not the up to 3 months on the label.

Nematode Intestinal Worms of Cats and Dogs

coming soon...about the different more common worms of cats and dogs

For more detailed information, especially about the treatment of enteritis due to worms, please go to our Intestinal Disease Page. For information about the diseases People can get from canine and feline intestinal worms...please go to our page about Zoonotics.

Tape Worms

coming soon...a little about this resistant little worm that comes from having fleas.

For more detailed information about this parasite, please go to our Intestinal Disease Page

Heart Worms

Heartworms are blood parasites, not intestinal worms...

so don't rely on over the counter "wormers" to prevent

heartworms. The only effective heartworm preventives

for pets are prescription medicines made specifically

for heartworm prevention that you should get from your vet. Heartworm Prevention is inexpensive and should be given monthly with the exception of the new ProHeart product which is an injection given every 6 months.

Mosquitos are the transmitters of heartworm disease.

Much more information about this parasite on our page about Heart Disease.

Coccidia

more about this nuisance parasite soon. Note: I've written quite a bit about Coccidia on the Intestinal page

Giardia

This is the little amoeba that you worry about when you don't boil the drinking water if you're out camping. Pets get this germ too, often leading to various degrees of diarrhea and sometimes vomiting. There is a vaccine available now for dogs that I personally don't use routinely. I tend to recommend this vaccine only in certain situations...mostly with breeders or hunting kennels that have been having problems with the disease.

For more detailed information...please go to our Intestinal Page.

Note: Mar 2003: I've written another article all about Giardia on our Intestinal Page 2

Cryptosporidia

Another Intestinal organism that sometimes causes a lot of trouble. More information coming soon.

Lice

Pets can harbor human lice and vice versa for awhile, so treat your pets if you or your children happen to get lice. Luckily, lice are usually easily killed with repeated shampooing with most flea shampoos.

Mites

Please go to our Page about Skin Problems for more information about Mites and Mange.

The most practical thing to know is that there are two very different types of mange requiring different treatment. One type (Sarcoptic and others of this group) is very contagious to other pets and fairly easy to treat. The other type of mange (Demodex) is not contagious but sometimes very difficult to treat. So if you suspect mange, go to your vet for the necessary skin test to determine if your pet does indeed really have mange, and if so, what type, so it can be treated successfully.

Flukes

coming soon... more about this parasite. A rare problem in our part of the world.

Info about The New Flea Products Available:

First, a few comments about flea pesticides:

In case you haven't figured it out by now, let me tell you that fleas have become very resistant to the standard pesticides available. And also in case you haven't figured it out by now, all the fruit loop people selling so called natural and herbal remedies must be living in la la land.

Orange peels, amyseth rock, brewers yeast, garlic, lemon zest, marigolds, pyrethrins or rose oils don't work well enough to make your pet comfortable. I'll happily retract this statement if I ever see some real evidence.

There is one exception...boric acid powders put on your floors and worked into your carpets can work well at reducing the flea load in a home, but that leads to potential practical and safety problems. And, of course, Boric Acid is a chemical...not a "natural" or "herbal" product.

So, what I'm telling you is that all the pesticides that used to work really well...sevin, dursban, diazonon, pyrethrin, and permethrin, flea collars... are now killing a much smaller percentage of fleas and for shorter periods.

As a rule, they are now not working well at all.

And some of the products that worked well have been taken off the market for potential safety reasons.

Bathing and combing with a flea comb is helpful...but not for serious flea problems...most of the flea population lives off the pet and each surviving flea can lay 100 eggs a day...killing 10 fleas with a comb doesn't make much of a dent.

Luckily, the big companies have come up with new and much better pesticides and the government has recently approved them has prescription treatments. They have cleared the very tough standards of the FDA, they are very safe as far as we can reasonably tell, and boy are they working well.

Because of their patented and prescription status, they are fairly expensive and only available legally at vets, but they are really great compared to anything else.

Here's the list of the what's working and a few comments about each:

Program and Sentinel:

Both of these are made by the same company (Novartis) and both have the same ingredient for fleas...the only difference is that Sentinel is combined with Interceptor for your convenience. (Interceptor is the once a month chewable tablet that prevents heartworm disease and also controls round, hook, and whip worms.)

The ingredient in these products doesn't kill a single adult flea... but what it does do is sterilize nearly 100% of the eggs of any flea that bites so that there's no next generation. Both are pills that you give once a month and both work very well as long as you understand you have to wait for the adult fleas and the fertile eggs already around to finish their life cycle (about 1 month).

Also, for it to work well, all the pets in the household need to be treated. It's safe to combine this treatment with other stuff to kill the adults initially. Both are made for both cats and dogs. For cats there's an injection available that lasts 6 months.

Sentinel is only available for dogs at present.

Novartis is the company that makes Program and Sentinel. They have an impressive website about animal health topics: www.petwellness.com

Capstar:

Also made by Novartis, this new tablet is extremely inexpensive, very effective (95-100% kill of all adult fleas within a few hours) and safe even for young kittens and puppies. It was designed to be given along with Sentinel or Progam until those products had time to kick in.

What's the catch? Capstar is metabolized and excreted from the body in about a day. So quick, great, safe, inexpensive, flea control; but only for a day.

This is a great product for short term use along with Program or Sentinel as it was intended...but also great for when you've just found or bought a pet or are taking a pet to a new home or for boarding to prevent transfer of fleas.

Advantage: This is a fine product, but I stopped selling it because I think Frontline works even better. Other Vets disagree. Perhaps it's like fighting over whether or not Ford or Chevy makes the best trucks. I will say that on the occassions when Frontline hasn't worked well (probably because it failed to bond to the pet's skin well), Advantage has worked fine...and vice versa. Note: 2003: Advantage has been improved. They've added pyrethrins and now claim to also repel mosquitos and ticks & fleas better than ever. We'll soon see if this claim is fairly accurate.

Bayer makes Advantage

Frontline "TopSpot" Plus:

With few exceptions, we get nearly 100% kills of all the fleas on your pet within 72 hours for 3-5 weeks at a time. This new pesticide is put on the back of the neck and bonds to the surface and subsurface of the skin and there's basically no resistance.

The plus part represents a safe chemical added to help kill the eggs and larvae.

This new flea product is so good that if you use it monthly you'll get good results right away and even better results after a few months when all the eggs and larvae are finally eliminated.

Safety is excellent, although a few animals experience a mild rash on the neck.

Some vets disagree with me about this; because the label says to wear gloves and not to apply to pets less than 12 weeks old, they think that Advantage is safer. It may be...but I think it's a mute point...both seem to be very safe.

Speaking of safety...I'm not an expert on this subject, but have you heard or seen the Novartis Ads saying that they leave no "pesticide residue" on your pets? This, of course, implies that "pesticide residue" is a bad thing (and the word pesticide certainly does carry bad connotations), but in this case that residue is not toxic to mammals but is toxic to flea larvae in your yard and house. And that's what we want!

One other thing; Frontline Plus Top Spot also does a fairly good job of killing Ticks...something it's competitors don't do with the exception of Revolution which doesn't do the job quite as well. (None of these products...including Frontline...are good tick repellents...the tick will attach to your pet...possibly transmitting disease or an inflammatory reaction before the tick is

killed by the pesticide)

One Nuisance: No baths for a couple of

days before or after application or it won't

bond to the skin as well nor last as long.

As a comment; the few times this product

doesn't work, I think it is because it doesn't

successfully bond to the skin or migrate

across the skin. I've found it doesn't work

in some chows, for example.

Merial makes this successful product

NOTE: For those of you avoiding products

produced by French Companies in response

to France's sanctimonious, anti-American

political stance may not want to buy either

Frontline or HeartGuard. Merial is a French Company.

Click here for a list of other French Owned Companies.

Note: I'm not necessarily advocating a French boycott, by the way. Regardless of your feelings about France, you might find the list interesting...it's pretty impressive. For example, I didn't realize Nissan was a mostly French owned company. Or Wild Turkey Bourbon!

Revolution:

I love this product too. It doesn't kill adult fleas quite as rapidly as frontline and Advantage. But it does a superior job of killing the flea eggs, larvae, and pupae. Like all the other products mentioned so far, Revolution works well for about a month at a time and then starts to fade. If you use Revolution regularly, you'll get excellent flea control.

But it does more than just flea control:

It kills and prevents heartworm disease...eliminating the need for other heartworm prevention.

It does a fair job of killing Ticks.

It kills ear mites and sarcoptic mange mites fairly well.

It controls nematode intestinal worms in cats and helps a little with control in dogs.

(We don't rely on Revolution to control worms in Dogs.)

And Tapeworms are not controlled with Revolution. (as you will find out by reading a little further...only a couple of medications effectively get rid of tapeworms)

It is extremely safe, even for young kittens. Revolution is applied to the back of the neck, just like Frontline, except it's a systemic medication and doesn't rely on sticking to the skin.

Pfizer makes Revolution

Program, Sentinel, Advantage, FrontlinePlus, and Revolution are all prescription:

The cost of all these great new products are fairly similar...about $7-15 an application at our clinic depending on the size of the pet and the product (Program is the least expensive). All are quite a bit more expensive than the similar looking products that you can get in pet shops and so forth without a prescription...but BEWARE OF IMITATIONS...those products do not contain the new, safe, pesticides that work so well.

Honest!

Speaking of being honest...doesn't it seem a bit dishonest for other companies to change their packaging and product names to look and sound almost identical to the new effective products that have finally gained FDA approval? Identical, that is, except for the active ingredient.

While I'm on this rant...when a package says it's product kills fleas and ticks for 3 months...notice closely that it doesn't say how many (what percent) or what type (native fleas and ticks tend to be much more resistant than laboratory fleas and ticks).

About the Older Flea Products that are Still Sold

Shampoos, Mousse, and Sprays:

Shampooing a pet for fleas is very effective if moving the pet to another flea free area after the bath. So very appropriate when bringing a new pet home etc. And shampooing frequently with the right shampoo is very beneficial, in most cases, to the health of the skin. (Some of the newer, more expensive shampoos that you can get from your vet aren't any better than other shampoos for flea control...but they tend to be much better for various skin conditions.)

But shampooing alone is usually ineffective at controlling all but mild flea problems.

The same goes for Mousse and sprays. Acutally, most of the sprays available are good at killing what fleas you have on your pet right away...the problem is duration. Because the fleas have gotten resistant to the chemicals in most sprays and other topicals, their effectiveness starts to wane after just a few hours. The exception is Frontline Spray. It contains a newly approved pestcide that the fleas haven't become resistant to yet. The newer products available not only work a lot better,(Frontline drops, Advantage, Revolution, Sentinel, Program) they are a lot more convenient to apply, so sprays have become sort of obsolete at our practice.

Collars:

A few brands of collars (especially Preventic Collars) are working fairly well for ticks, but I have yet to find one that consistantly controls fleas well. I rate them as fairly ineffective. Some of my clients seem to be pleased with their collars...but when I examine their pets, there's lots of fleas over their butts...they just happen to have pets that aren't too sensitive, so it seems the owners just don't notice the fleas.

What about The stuff you can get at Walmart:

As I edited this page, I realized I repeated myself a little on this subject, but decided to leave this paragraph in anyways.

As soon as Frontline TopSpot and Advantage hit the market a couple of years ago, and it was obvious that they were working really well, pet product companies changed their packaging to look and sound like Frontline or Advantage. All these look or sound alike products are applied to the back of the neck like Frontline and Advantage and all come with sales pitches along the lines of why spend twice as much at the vet when this is just like the stuff they sell. Well, it is just like it except for the active ingredient that does the work!

Almost everyone knows how difficult and expensive it is to get a new chemical product through FDA and on the market in the U.S. It has to be proven both safe and effective.

But what people don't know is that once a product is on the market, the FDA is pretty quick to remove stuff that turns out to be unsafe (actually, it's usually pulled first by the manufactuer fearful of possible lawsuits), but not much is removed just because it's become ineffective.

And that's what has happened with many flea control products. The labels that say effective against fleas etc don't say that was back in 1959. Or effective against laboratory fleas raised in Alaska..not our native Southeastern Flea. HooBoy.

This is the same problem with believing labels for dewormers, other parasite medicines and pesticides, and in fact, many medicines.

And the Safety Question: We've had several very sick cats in our clinic due to the application of over the counter topical pesiticides meant for dogs...cats are much more sensitive as a rule to pesticides.

Treating the House & Yard

coming soon, more information...although in general, several things help enough to be worth doing but no

one thing working really well anymore. Luckily, the newer monthly products already mentioned above (Program, Sentinel, FrontlinePlus, and Revolution) are making house and yard treatment not as important except in severe cases.

For indoors...if you have a severe problem...I like to recommend foggers if not too inconvenient...mainly because they have become so inexpensive and they at least get a good initial kill rate. Duration and egg kill is poor though due to resistance.

Combing & Grooming. And a comment about flea traps

-Helps a lot with the general health of the skin; no small benefit.

-Helps you to have an intimate familiarity with your pet's skin condition; if you're grooming and combing your pet regularly, you'll spot a parasite problem early.

-It allows the early spotting and removal of ticks

-Grooming and combing usually makes your pet feel much better.

-And regular combing helps maintain your pecking order status as master which helps maintain your pet's sanity. Have you ever noticed that...dogs who think they're humans tend to become neurotic head cases. As for cats...

So; grooming and combing is great.

But not very effective at controlling an established flea problem. I know there's a certain satisfaction in squishing fleas as you comb them out. But remember that the adult fleas that you kill represent only the tip of the iceberg...for every adult you kill, there are thousands of larvae and hundreds of thousands of eggs.

This same principle is why flea traps don't work. Yes, you can attract fleas to jump into a vibrating or hot pan of water, but so what?, you still have a major flea problem.

So, if your pet has anything but a brand new or very minor flea problem; quit dinking around. Go to your vet and take advantage of the new products that work so well.

Alternative & Natural Flea Control

coming soon, I'll try to find links to sites that promote these products, but I'm pretty well convinced that none work very well.

Speaking of "alternative medicine", before you get lured into thinking that the major pharmaceutical companies are somehow evil and that the companies that sell herbs and natural remedies...often along with religion...are angelic; check out the website QuackWatch for some realism.

It's a little bit ironic that I introduce this topic as I have, because I personally:

A. Am very religious

B. Am a believer and continued user of several alternative products

It's just that I've been burned so many times by exaggerated claims and lousy results. And I don't think holiness should be hawked along-side miracle cures. So just be careful and mindful.

Lice Treatments for Pets

coming soon...more details, but usually any good flea shampoo will work.

Tick Control

These buggers are very resistant and very hard to kill when you have a lot of them.

Step one Is Avoidance; try to keep your pet out of tick infested areas. Otherwise;

Our most successful product is the Preventic Brand Tick Collar which usually works great for all but seed ticks for 3-5 weeks. Not any good for fleas. Not usually good for the "up to 3 months" on the label. Comes in a Spray version as well. Both are fairly expensive.

Dursban works fairly well too when used on the yard or pen regularly but it's not necessarily safe.

Bathing and physical removal helps a lot.

Both Frontline and Revolution help keep tick populations down but don't necessarily kill the tick that gets on your pet fast enough to prevent tick bite irritation or tranmission of disease.

What's all this nonsense about extracting a tick; Just pull the sucker off !

coming soon; how to remove a tick

Tick Borne Diseases and Problems

Coming soon...a discussion about:

Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever

Lymes Disease

Tick Paralysis

TREATMENT CONSIDERATIONS:

One of the nice things about the tick borne diseases that we will be discussing soon is that the treatment for all of them is similar.

At our hospital, most cases suspected of tick borne disease are treated with:

Injection of Oxytetracycline followed by oral Doxycycline or Tetracycline

Injection of High dose Dexamethasone followed by prednisone

Injection of B Complex ± B12 ± Thiamine

Antioxidants

And Usually a Preventic Collar AND Frontline

We Hospitalize and monitor depending on the severity of the problem and depending on the case we will also use

Both vitamin and mineral supplementation

Phenobarbital as a smooth muscle relaxant and to suppress CNS irritation

Uncaria (an herbal, alternative medication) for immune modulation

Most cases respond nicely.