We are having serious issues with fleas this summer. Our dog is an outside dog. We have (repeatedly) treated our yard and our dog (frontline), but we are still finding fleas on us when we come in from outside. I find maybe 6-8 fleas in the house throughout the day. There are several stray cats in our neighborhood. Could this be where they are coming from? Is there anything I could treat my house with that would be safe to use around toddlers? It annoys me to get bitten by fleas, but drives me crazy to see one biting my babies!
*Added more details*
Yes, they are definitely fleas.
We have a gorgeous 1/2 acre fenced in back yard...lush grash, nearly the entire yard is shaded by pecan trees - its great. Our dog is a 80+ pound German Shepherd. My husband, my two babies, and I live in a small 2 bedroom house. Keeping our dog inside is NOT an option. I am seriously considering asking animal control to place some traps. I just hate the thought of the cats possibly being put down. At the same time I don't think it is fair for my family to suffer because someone else is/was irresponsible with their pets.
Something that has worked for us is to put a bowl of soapy water under a night light at night and the fleas are drawn to the light and will drown in the water. The soap will prevent them from crawling out. Totally kid safe as long as you remember to pick the bowls up before the kids get up.
I give my dogs Garlic powder on their food (blood sucking bugs DO NOT like garlic, if humans eat a lot of garlic, the mosquitoes will also stay away), and when it is a bad year for fleas, and they are coming in the house on ppl, I use DE (Diatomaceous earth--not sure I spelled that correctly.) One year our house became infested with fleas, but I was never able to find a single one on my dog, and never saw her scratching...but they were sure attacking the humans, lol! I tried all kinds of products to no avail, and then I learned about DE. Be careful with it though, because it kills just about all bugs indiscriminately, even lady bugs, so only put it inside, not out.
Getting rid of the cats won't help much. Fleas come from the yard. Planting rosemary will deter the cats from your yard, they hate rosemary. Planting lavender and rosemary will deter fleas in your yard. But if the fleas are hungry not much will deter them. BTW, Frontline is not even "baby-safe". You are still introducing chemicals into your environment by putting that on your animal. It is really hard to get rid of fleas, with or without chemicals. My upstairs neighbor had an infestation last summer and I helped get rid of them. It took many months of flea bombing(every 7 days to stay on top of the egg cycle) and daily vacuuming. I got a few in my living space and I chose to get rid of the area rugs I had, and that seemed to solve the problem. If you have carpeting in your home, you are going to have a really hard time getting rid of them for good. So sorry you have to go through this!
The groomers at Petsmart infested my precious boy with fleas, we had spent hundreds treating the yard and house and could not get it under control until I gave him the oral pill for flea control "comfortis" - ask your vet about it. I wasn't happy aput giving my baby systemic pest control orally, but we felt that our backs were against the wall. It is supposed to be good for 30 days, I had a second pill on hand but didn't have to give it to him until about 90 days later, and never had to give him another after that. Good luck!
Here's an article that describes the life cycle of fleas and ways to fight them:
http://blog.deanandadie.net/2008/09/a-house-infested-with...
It sounds like living in GA would be the perfect environment for fleas to live because they like warm weather and high humidity.
Are you sure you are picking up the fleas from outside, or have they settled into your house? To get them out of your house, this article suggests vacuuming thoroughly twice a day for a certain number of days in a row can work. If you are carrying them in yourselves from outside, that seems like a harder problem. You might talk with your vet about a different yard treatment, as it sounds like fleas become resistent to pesticides very quickly and the one you've used might not be working.
If the cats in your neighborhood are really strays, can you call animal control to have them captured? If they have owners, then they should be treating the fleas also.
Living in Minnesota, I haven't had this problem, since our cold weather kills them!
we switched our dog to Confortis - it was so much better than frontline. Make sure you get that one day pill that kills all the fleas on him - groom him that day and keep him out of the house until there are none left and you are sure he is clean. Meanwhile bomb the house to make sure the fleas are out. Give the confortis and you should be good. This worked for us - good luck.
Hi ! This yr there seems to b alot of them.!!! We have a papillion & a basset hound that was sleeping in my sons room until bites were all over his legs. I ended up shaving the papillion & using flea stuff on both the dogs .The liquid kind u put on their backs is good. I also used flea bombs. They say SSS oil from Avon is good & ive been using calamine lotion for my sons bites.The dogs r now staying in another part of the house & things have calmed down.Hope this helped!
I want to say borax. Put it on the ground around your house including the threshold. It has been so long since I had to deal with fleas I really don't remember.
Stray cats, your dog, your shoes, almost anything can bring fleas into the yard and ultimately into the house. Once they've hatched they are terribly difficult to get rid of. Once you do get rid of them you HAVE to continue to treat year round because of the way they hatch...
I use a cleaning product that has high grade tea tree oil in it that will work on animals and drive away live fleas but it won't do anything on eggs until they hatch. I've used a eucalyptus based powder that I got at PetSmart that worked in the house and it should be as safe for baby as you can get. I use only natural non toxic products and I felt it was safe in our home. If you pick it up, reread the ingredients. All powders, even baby powder, is not safe to be inhaled regularly so keep your baby off the floor.
Go ahead and call animal control...stray cats don't just carry fleas, but diseases and they can get very aggressive as well.
Hope you resolve this quickly!
M.
The best thing we ever did was give the dogs confortis. Fleas start dropping off dead in half an hour. We only used it while the fleas were bad and discontinued it when flea season subsided.
Are you sure they are fleas? there was a post on fleas a few days ago, somewhere recommended oils to put on your skin.
I just read something about Rosemary being a natural flea repellant. Maybe you could google it and get more information. Maybe you could plant some around your house.
Sorry you are having this problem.
what about essential oils on your dog? Inside you put down borax, leave overnight and then vacuum up
You can spray your yard for fleas. It is what I would do.
If you are going to keep your dog outside where stray cats roam, there is
not much you can do. I would consider having your dog live inside.
someone else just asked a similar question a couple of days ago. (you can look in my "answered questions" on my profile and find it quickly).
My thought:
Google "Salt for fleas" and you will learn a lot about using it to dry up the fleas you have. You sprinkle salt liberally, leave it for a day or two, vacuum, repeat. I did it for a few weeks and mine went away.
Also, I tried the lamp with hot soapy water as someone suggested. Didn't work for me, but I was not seeing 6 fleas a day like you are. I saw that they do sell 'lures' for fleas. It was described online as a lure that the flea thinks is a warm-blooded cat. It will jump on it and then get stuck and die. That helps the fleas, but not the eggs that are already in your carpet.
We have an outside cat and while I do put Frontline on him we occasionally still get fleas in the house. I mix together a cup of baking soda and a cup of salt then sprinkle it lightly over all the carpets. I leave it there for a day or two then vacuum it all up. It really helps.
Here's some more info: http://www.ehow.com/how_###-###-####_fleas-naturally-baki...
Frontline and Advantage do not work for us. We live in the country on acreage and our lab roams all over our place. She brings home fleas from other dogs on the place. When we treat her with Comfortis, we don't see any. I treat our yard with bug killer in early spring and then treat the dogs with Comfortis and we don't see them. I have some Advantage for one of our dogs from last year and I put some on her to try to use it up. I treated our other 2 dogs with Comfortis. It was honestly an experiment because Comfortis is so expensive and I wanted to see if the Advantage would work just as well. After 2 weeks the dog with Adv. had fleas. One night when she was laying beside me, I had 2 jump on me. She was chewing and biting all the time. The other dogs were fine. I was afraid to give the adv. dog the Comfortis until it was time to give the others the pill because I didn't know if the Adv. would react with the Comfortis. So for 2 more weeks I had to comb her often and tried to keep the fleas off of her the best I could. When it was time, I put the Comfortis on all of the dogs. I have not treated the yard again, and I haven't seen any fleas on the dogs or on ME!! I buy 2 comfortis pills for each dog at a time because I can't afford to buy 3 boxes at a time. The vet doesn't raise the cost if you only buy one at a time so it works out for me. If your dog has a bed outside, the fleas may be multilplying on it. If you have a rug outside by the backdoor, they may be living in it and jumping on you as you walk in. I have dusted flea powder on the rugs by our doors in the past. Good luck.
