Your Dog and The Life of The Flea

Fleas, lice and ticks are a constant annoyance to any dog and can cause allergies. The life of the flea is more than just annoying for your dog, as your dog can develop an allergy to fleas. However there are natural allergy treatments you can use.

The Fleas Life Cycle

Fleas live in the ground and use your dog as a host for food. Their food is the dog’s blood. Once they have eaten they jump off the dog and return to the soil, or carpet where they lay their eggs. The eggs hatch and the cycle begins again.

When this cycle has repeated itself many times, the grounds, carpet, cracks of the floor, all become infested with fleas and eggs. If a dog does not have its bedding washed frequently, or lives outside and has special sleeping holes in the dirt, they are more likely to suffer from fleas.

To break this cycle you need to kill the flea. There are many products available that you can use for the dog in shampoos and products to treat your home and pest exterminators will treat the outside area as well.

Flea collars are convenient, but can cause irritation to the dog and even become dangerous when wet.

Flea powder is safer, but has to be applied regularly. If your dog lives inside and you go away for a week or so, how many times have you returned to a house that is jumping with fleas? This is because the vibration you have made, walking on the floor has hatched the eggs.

Many people are of the belief that their dog is too clean to have fleas.

Fleas love clean dogs.

• Fleas – It only takes one flea to give a dog an allergy to its bite. If a dog is infested with fleas, you will find red dirt spots on the dog’s skin and when bathed, the water will turn brown. This only happens to a neglected dog and the average pet will not have this happen. Veterinarians have to treat many dogs that develop an allergy to the fleabite, similar to humans who have a reaction to mosquitoes.

• Lice – Lice attach themselves to the skin and suck blood as well. Use lice and disinfect bedding. Lice are usually picked up in a strange environment and are not as problematic as the flea.

• Ticks – Ticks are the same. They live in the bush and fields and are more active when the weather changes. Dogs that have access to a country life style need to be checked regularly for ticks. Use tweezers to remove the whole tick. They can make your dog very sick, so if you have been to the country a wash in special shampoo to treat ticks is advisable, particularly if you have a long haired dog.

So as you can see fleas are a big problem…but what do you do if your dog is itching but there are no fleas!? Or perhaps they continually itch and scratch? You can click the links and read my articles on those dog problems.