How does flea prevention medicine work? (like advantage or frontline)?

Fleas, Ticks and How To Control Them

The flea has a lifespan of 6-12 months. Each female flea can lay up to 2000 eggs in a lifetime!!! Fleas actually spend about 80% of their time off your pet, only hopping on him/her to take a blood meal. Therefore, if treatment is only directed at the pet, the flea problem will be more difficult to control. The life cycle of the flea takes 4 steps. The adult female lays eggs that become larva. The larva then becomes a pupa encased in a cocoon. Finally the pupa becomes an adult. The eggs, larval and pupal stages of the life cycle are not affected by baths and dips, and are often also very difficult to eliminate with sprays and foggers, especially if allowed to progress to the pupal stages which can stay dormant in adverse environments for very long time periods.

To determine if your pet has fleas, use a flea comb or fine-toothed barber's comb to survey your pet's coat for fleas or flea dirt. The tines of a flea comb are small enough to trap fleas and flea dirt. If you catch a flea, you can kill it by dipping the comb in soapy water. Flea dirt looks like dark black specks of "dirt", but it is really dried blood left behind by feeding fleas. If your pet is small, comb it on a white washing machine or dryer so that you can see the dark fleas and flea dirt easier. If your pet is too big to lift, put a white sheet or towel under them and brush. You can often also diagnose fleas in a heavy flea infested environment by placing a flat dish of soapy water on a white sheet or towel under a light on the floor of a room where the dogs usually sleeps. Fleas will be drawn to the light and will be visible on the sheet and drowned in the soapy water. Extreme precautions must be used to prevent fires.

In addition to their pesky ability to cause frustration, fleas can cause medical problems in your pet. A flea's saliva can cause a severe allergic reaction, resulting in extreme itching, scratching, chewing, or nibbling of the skin. Fleas can also transmit a type of intestinal parasite called tapeworms (please see the section in this book called "Intestinal Parasites"). Should any of these symptoms occur in your pet, please call a vet..

The good news is that fighting fleas and ticks is safer, easier, more effective and convenient today than ever before. Please take advantage of the following wonderful products and let us help rid you and your pet's life of fleas forever. Your pet will love you for it!!

v Program is a once-a-month tablet (a liquid you feed in food once-a-month or an injection we give every six months are used for cats) given to your pet at mealtime that breaks the flea life cycle by preventing flea eggs from hatching. It is a very safe and convenient way to control flea infestations, since it breaks the life cycle right at the beginning. Program is extremely safe and can be started in puppies and kittens as young as six weeks, as well as in pregnant or nursing animals. Program is not an insecticide so it is safe for your family as well, and alleviates concerns about using insecticides in the home and environment. If your pet already has fleas, it will take longer for Program to break the life cycle sincee it can take 30-90 days for eggs that have already been laid to hatch and become adults. Once the life cycle is broken, continuing to use Program year-round will prevent the life cycle from starting again.

Please note: program is safe to use in conjunction with heartworm preventative. Also, the effective cat dose of Program is 3 times larger than in dogs. Therefore, the weight on the packet of tablets is for dogs not cats, but if it is easier to pill your cat or if you have multiple cats that are difficult to separate during feeding, you can use the tablets or you can bring your cat into our office to receive the program injection every six months.

v Frontline/Topspot is an odorless liquid that you apply to a small area of skin over your pet's neck. Topspot can kill fleas for a period of 6-12 weeks in dogs and 4-10 weeks in cats, and ticks for a month. After application, the medicine will spread in the oils of the skin over the pet's body and is protected by the hair follicle and old gland making it is protected from removal by shampooing or swimming. Once the product is spread over the pet's body (a process, which can take up to 24 hours to complete), fleas and ticks are killed within 24-48 hours. Topspot can be applied to puppies and kittens as young as 12 weeks of age. This product is extremely easy to use and much more convenient than bathing or dipping. If your pet is frequently bathed or goes swimming (more than about once a week), Topspot may need to be applied slightly more frequently than every 30 days in order to continue achieving greater than 90% effectiveness.

v Preventic is a dog collar that kills and detaches ticks within hours and prevents new ticks from attaching for up to three months. Preventic eliminates the need to pick off ticks by hand and is a tick-specific product that when used as directed, poses no significant risk to dogs or humans. And since Preventic actually kills and detached 99% of ticks within 24 hours, it helps prevent Lyme disease. Because the active ingredient is carried on the oils of the skin, it is unlikely that the activity of the collar is completely rinsed off when the animal gets wet. However, if a detergent soap is used, efficacy built up already is more likely to be reduced. Therefore, it is advisable to remove the collar before shampooing and then replace it. Preventic will be fully protective again in 24 hours.

v Advantage is an odorless liquid that you apply every 30 days to a small area of skin over your cat's neck or dog's shoulder blades. On larger dogs it is applied over several spots on the dog's back. The product has a special carrier mechanism that takes it to the base of each hair on your pet where it quickly dries and lasts for approximately 30 days. The flea does not have to bite your pet for this product to work; helping to avoid the itching commonly caused by flea bites. Advantage works by affecting the flea's nervous system. The flea is paralyzed and therefore dies within 12 hours of the flea hopping on your pet. Recent research also shows that as the animal sheds, the medicine is shed with it and can act as a means of helping to kill fleas in the pet's environment (carpet, floors, etc.) Advantage is extremely safe for your family members and your pet and can be started as early as 6 weeks in puppies and 8 weeks in kittens. It is also extremely easy to use and much more convenient and long lasting than bathing and dipping. If your pet is frequently bathed or goes swimming (more than about once a week), Advantage may need to be applied slightly more frequently than every 30 days in order to continue achieving greater than 90% effectiveness.

v Sentinel is a medicine that combines the medicine in Program with the medicine in a heartworm preventative called Interceptor. We recommend that all dogs be on heartworm preventative and encourage the use of Program also, so if you elect to have your dog on both, this will allow you the convenience of only having to give your dog one medication every 30 days.

A word of caution on flea and tick collars…for the most part, we do not find other brands of collars to be effective and often find fleas and ticks on pets wearing them. It is for this reason that when it comes to controlling fleas and ticks, our recommendation is that all pets be put on Program when they are young or in older pets, before a flea infestation exists. It is extremely safe and effective at keeping the flea population at a minimum and because it works by breaking the life cycle, it is most effective if used year- round. Using year-round is also most cost effective because once the life cycle is broken, there is no need to treat the environment with sprays and foggers.

If you see fleas or ticks later in the year, we recommend continued use of Program year-round to prevent a major infestation and then adding Advantage or Topspot in order to kill the adult fleas and ticks. Using Advantage or Topspot is much more convenient and effective than bathing and/or dipping, since most flea and tick shampoos and dips will only kill the fleas and ticks that are on your pet at the time of the bath/dip and they rarely have any repelling effect afterwards. By using Program in conjunction with Advantage or Topspot, you will be able to kill adult fleas and ticks that are picked up from the environment, while also preventing fleas from laying viable eggs in your house before they are killed by the Advantage or Topspsot. Again, let us stress that we do like the Preventic collar and have found it to be very effective for tick control in dogs and it can be used in conjunction with both Program and Advantage.

If your pet already has fleas or has a severe and/or long-standing infestation, the Program combined with Advantage or Topspot protocol we recommend will work to eliminate the fleas but it will take longer because the pre-adult stages will be in the environment already. Here are some things you can do to expedite the elimination process:

·Bathe or dip all household cats or dogs

·"De-flea" the pet's environment, including bedding, furniture, flooring, etc. by vacuuming to pick up fleas, eggs, larva, and pupa. As soon as you have vacuumed all areas your pet frequents, throw the bag away in a trash can OUTSIDE in order to prevent them from "escaping" back into your house.

·Use of fogging/spray types of insecticides and growth regulators in the yards and/or home.

·In extremely sever cause, an exterminator may have to be called in to help

(We find that the last two are rarely needed because Program, Advantage, and Frontline/Topspot are so effective at flea control.)

Ticks are a nuisance for your pets and family. Not only do they cause blood loss, irritation and infection where they attach, they may also transmit to your pets and family certain disease, such as Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Ehrlichiosis and Tick Paralysis most of which exhibit similar signs (See Lyme Disease in Canine Disease section in this booklet). Both female and male ticks are blood-sucking parasites. Although they often feed for 4-5 days, after a blood meal they usually detach and fall to the ground, where they find a dark, warm and humid spot to hide and for the female to lay her eggs. Unlike fleas, in which only the adult stage is parasitic, all tick stages can feed on you or your pet.

When a tick attaches to your pet, they inject something into your pet's skin to keep the blood from clotting as they are ingesting it. Because of this, some animals will have a local tissue reaction to the tick bite. The reaction looks like a red, raised bump right around where the tick was attached. This reaction usually remains for 5 - 14 days and sometimes even longer. As long as the reaction does not have a discharge or cause overt pain to your pet, it is not considered serious. You can apply some triple antibiotic ointment (neosporin) to the area 2 - 3 times daily.

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How Does Flea Medicine Work

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RE:

How does flea prevention medicine work? (like advantage or frontline)?

If the fleas come in contact with the medicine will they die or do they actually have to bite the skin of the animal and injest the medicine?

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Can be either way, I assume. Mainly, it's when the fleas bite the animal after the preventive medication was applied.

Thankyou for the answers everyone <3

Thank you all for your answers and opinions.

If they come in contact with it they die.

They might bite before they die, though.