Ticks and Fleas: Getting Rid of Them Properly

Almost every owner who says a flea treatment "did not work" applied it correctly, to a clean animal, and then watched fleas return a fortnight later. It is genuinely maddening.

The treatment usually did work. It simply dealt with the small part of the problem that was sitting on the dog, and left the much larger part exactly where it was.

Why fleas come back

Adult fleas on the animal are a minority of the population. The rest, as eggs, larvae and pupae, are in the environment: bedding, rugs, sofa seams, the cracks between floorboards, the dust under furniture.

Eggs laid on the animal fall off wherever it goes. They hatch, develop, and emerge as adults that jump straight back on. Pupae can also lie dormant for weeks and hatch when they detect warmth and movement, which is why a treated house can seem clear and then produce a fresh wave.

Treat only the animal and you are removing adults from a factory that keeps producing them.

Doing it properly

1. Treat every animal in the house

All dogs and all cats, on the same day, whether or not they are scratching. One untreated animal maintains the population for everyone.

Use a veterinary product and follow the interval on the label exactly. Most failures are products applied at longer intervals than instructed, or bought from an unreliable source and long expired.

Never use a dog flea product on a cat. Some contain permethrin, which is severely toxic to cats and kills them. This is one of the most common serious poisonings vets see, and it is entirely avoidable.

2. Treat the environment on the same day

• Wash all bedding, the animals' and any human bedding they sleep on, at the hottest temperature the fabric allows.
• Vacuum thoroughly: floors, rugs, under and behind furniture, sofa seams and cushions. Vacuuming also triggers dormant pupae to hatch, which is useful, since they then meet the treatment.
• Empty the vacuum outside immediately.
• Consider a household spray for heavy infestations, following the instructions and keeping animals and children away until dry.

3. Keep going for three months

The life cycle means a single treatment cannot clear an established infestation. Continue treating every animal on schedule for at least three months, and keep vacuuming. This is the step almost everyone abandons at week three, right before it would have worked.

Ticks

Ticks are a different problem. The concern is less the bite than what it transmits: tick-borne illnesses cause fever, lethargy, appetite loss, pale gums and, in serious cases, life-threatening anaemia.

Removing one safely

1. Use fine-tipped tweezers or a tick hook. Grip as close to the skin as possible, at the head, not the body.
2. Pull straight out with steady pressure. Do not twist, jerk or squeeze the body.
3. Clean the area with antiseptic and wash your hands.
4. Watch the site for a fortnight, and watch the animal for lethargy or appetite loss.

What not to do

Do not burn a tick with a match, smother it in petrol, kerosene, nail polish or oil, or squeeze the body. Each of these makes the tick regurgitate into the wound, which increases the chance of transmitting whatever it carries. These remedies are widespread and they make the situation worse.

Things not to put on an animal

• Engine oil, kerosene, diesel or petrol. These burn skin, are absorbed, and poison the animal when it grooms.
• Household disinfectant. Dilute or not, it is not a parasite treatment.
• Human insect repellent. Wrong formulation, wrong dose.
• Dog products on cats. Repeating it because it kills cats.
• Unlabelled powders sold loose. You cannot dose what you cannot identify.

The yard

Fleas and ticks live in shaded, humid ground: long grass, leaf litter, the space under a veranda. Cut grass short, clear litter, and let sunlight into the places where animals lie. Where dogs rest against a wall or under a step, that ground holds the population.

When to see a vet

Go if the skin is broken, smelly, scabbed or losing hair, since infection has usually followed the itching; if there is pale gums, lethargy or appetite loss after ticks; if the animal is very young, very old or unwell; or if correct treatment for a month has changed nothing.

Parasite control is a grinding, unglamorous, repeating cost, which is exactly why it lapses. Each individual treatment is small enough to postpone, and the consequence, a skin infection needing consultations and medication or a tick-borne illness needing bloodwork, arrives far enough later that it feels like separate bad luck.

Flea, tick and parasite control is covered on Skeepy Pet HMO plans, along with the consultations and treatment if it has already gone further than that. It moves prevention out of the monthly maths, which is the only place it reliably survives.