Flea and Tick Prevention

Scary stuff, so what do you do to protect your Cavalier King Charles Spaniel from fleas and ticks?

Fleas

The key to preventing flea infestation is to do something about it as soon as you see scratching. To be sure your Cavalier is not reacting to an allergy, use a flea comb to to comb through the fur from nape to tail and look to see if there is any evidence of flea dirt. This will be little black specs which are actually dried blood. If there are only a few fleas present, picked up from an outing, then you can comb through and find the fleas and drop into a dish of soapy water. Frequent flea combing will eliminate fleas without the need for chemicals.

If there is more than one or two, you get a flea every time you comb through during the course of the day, you need to get more help. My vet has learned on her own dogs that Advantage works best when you have a flea infestation. Never use over the counter spot on treatments. You never know until too late that it could kill your Cavalier.

You can bathe your dog in a NEEM shampoo to alleviate itching and discourage fleas jumping on. Tropiclean works very nicely and smells great! I find it at Petco. They also have sales on it sometimes.

Ticks

Ticks are much harder to deal with. This year I have learned more than I ever wanted to about ticks. I have friends who have been battling ticks longer than I have. I am writing this October 3 have had ticks since April. I have tried all the things everyone said I should. I hate to say it, but not much works. Frontline for the dogs does kill ticks, but ticks have to bite the dog first! This is not prevention.

What does not work.

I have use a spectracide, Zodiac, Hot Shot and Sephatrol.Hot Shot had some effect, but ticks are hard to kill. Most chemicals will say on the label that they will kill adult ticks. This does nothing for unhatched or juvenile ticks.  I have taken a live tick and sprayed it with the chemicals I used and the tick does not die. Even 24 hours later, the tick is still crawling around, and still after 48 hours and a second spraying. I bombed my house and left for a week. I came home to ticks galloping from their hiding places to find the dogs. It is very depressing, tiring, mentally exhausting dealing with these things.The next thing I will try on recommendation of a vet is Termidor which contains the same active ingredient as Frontline.

What does work.

What I have found that does work is picking the ticks off the dogs by hand. I drop them into a bottle with a bit of alcohol in the bottom which kills them straight away. I do not flush or wash them down a drain. They will crawl back out. Same with the trash. You have to contain them. I have literally picked hundreds, probably thousands. I have 8 dogs and I go over them first thing in the morning, during the day and before bed (I have no life). I pay attention to the growth stages I am seeing. From nymph to adult, it tells me what I will be expecting to find over the next few days. I am trying to prevent females from reaching maturity where they are engorged with blood, drop from the dog and crawl away to a dark secluded spot where the eggs will mature inside of her body on the blood and hatch out into hundreds of nymphs restarting the cycle.

Picking the dogs over is time consuming, but very important if you ever want to be rid of them. You have to look between toes and paw pads, along the tendons up the legs. The ears have several hiding places. Ticks love anyplace that has blood close to the surface. The anus is one of those places and the base of the tail. Nymphs are the hardest to find, but learning to recognize them on the dog is important if you are ever going to get rid of them. If you see them on the belly or between toes, you have had a new hatch. Next you will see small juvenile ticks. The larger they get, the closer you are getting to another female dropping and crawling away to hatch a new generation.

Eliminate Hiding Places

You will also need to clean often and eliminate hiding places. If you have clutter, now is a good time to organize yourself and get rid of it. Ticks climb and they will get everywhere. Look in the corners of the ceiling and walls, base boards and door and window moldings. If a tick is in a difficult place, use a piece of tape to pick it up.  Ticks can also get behind walls. One friend had to remove his baseboards and tile to seal up hiding places.

You will need to pull furniture away from the walls every few days to look for engorged females. Check bedding daily for ticks. The best way to get ticks out of hiding is to put a dog in their presence and then go over the dog again.

Prevention

You need to keep dogs away from low hanging foliage. Never use organic mulch, we got ticks when we put mulch in the yard around the pool. Using Frontline is fine when you know the dogs may be exposed to ticks, but it really is not effective to use it all the time, because you are more likely to run into a flea problem. Frontline does not get rid of fleas, Advantage is better and you should not use both on your dog. These products are toxins, the less you use them on your dog, the healthier he will be. The AKC gazette had a very interesting article about prevention and mentions that cinnamon is very useful because it raises the sulfur level in the blood and parasites don’t like sulfur. When going for walks or if you live in an area where ticks are prevalent, you should give Sentry Natural Defense a try.

Natural Defense is a product line that uses natural aromatic oils to repel ticks and fleas and is the first PREVENTATIVE I have found. . The spray smells mostly like cloves and is much more pleasant than the smell of Advantage which burns my nostrils. You can’t use it on a cat and should be careful using in on some toy breeds. I have not used the spot on treatment, I prefer to use the spray on the fur. Aromatic oils can burn the skin, so go lightly on the first application until you know how your dog will deal with it. The spray will make the coat look a little oily for a few days, but so do the spot on treatments.