Help! Fleas... still!

[joenali]

We discovered our dog had fleas about a month ago. We called in an exterminator and they treated our whole house. We have been vacuuming almost daily, washing bedding about every two or three days. Giving the dog flea baths using a natural product and then using advantage shampoo every seven days. I just gave her another dose of revolution yesterday and have another message out for the exterminator to come out again sometime next week. I just combed her using a flea comb about 10 fleas came off of her. I’m no longer getting any bites but I’m at a loss for what to do. We are losing our minds.

[joenali]

Nov 23, 2019 11:41:19 GMT -5 spearmintleaf said:

Have you looped in your vet?

We took her to the vet right away when we noticed them.

[FastHands]

Are you finding fleas in the house away from the dog still? With that much of an infestation, I'd coordinate a capstar treatment with another exterminator visit, and probably change the flea preventative.

[joenali]

Nov 23, 2019 11:52:31 GMT -5 FastHands said:

Are you finding fleas in the house away from the dog still? With that much of an infestation, I'd coordinate a capstar treatment with another exterminator visit, and probably change the flea preventative.

We have monitors set up throughout the house and we see nothing.

We hadn’t been giving her a monthly flea preventative because she has had seizures when we gave it to her in the past. The seizures were awful and scary. We had to call the pet poison control line when it happened. We made it several years without a problem. The revolution is a topical treatment that she started last month. What is capstar? We’ll
Do anything!

[Leeham Rimes]

When you hired the exterminators did they come back a few times for additional treatment? Because in Florida we have a pretty terrible flea problem and whenever I have hired exterminators, which is the only thing that ever helped, they always said they need to come back A few times within a span of a few months and that was written into their quote.

We then chose a quarterly service for flea treatment to make sure they don’t come back.

*Also humans can bring in fleas on their pants and then the fleas can hop to whatever animal is living in there. At our new place we have zero carpet and have absolutely no fleas, so I know carpet is another issue.

[joenali]

Leeham Rimes this would be the second treatment. We do have carpeting, but thankfully only in about half the house.

I’m wondering if we need to do some kind of treatment outside where she goes potty?

[Leeham Rimes]

Nov 23, 2019 12:06:25 GMT -5 joenali said:

Leeham Rimes this would be the second treatment. We do have carpeting, but thankfully only in about half the house.

I’m wondering if we need to do some kind of treatment outside where she goes potty?

You just reminded me, I only gave you half the story. we had quarterly treatment for indoor and outdoor flea treatment since like I said before humans can bring it in on the pants and then they jump on the animals with in the house. For the indoor they would spray at the baseboards and also lay down carpet sprinkle to kill any not yet hatched eggs.

But I am wondering what your process was because when we had issues they came the first time they sprayed the baseboards, laid down carpet sprinkle I had to vacuum however many hours later. Then they came back within 30 days and did —-I can’t remember which part of the treatment they did ( maybe both) and then came back one additional time and did only one of the treatment. All of this cost about $200 (this was a while back)

that’s when I got set up with the quarterly stuff.

[sagelily]

Our vet recommended as the first step something I got at petsmart called quick tabs to treat the immediate issue. Then we used frontline which is topical like revolution. I don’t know about revolution, but with frontline we were told to wait 48 hours after bathing to apply or it reduces effectiveness. That combination hasn’t worked perfectly even with frequent vacuuming and linen washing so I want to try nexgard or brevecto next month as an alternative to the frontline. Each is a pill instead of topical. I have no idea if that would be better since your dog had seizures, but wanted to mention it. A co-worker also mentioned Seresto which is a flea collar that sits under the dog’s regular collar and lasts about 6-9 months.

[sagelily]

Also, our vet said to empty vacuum after each use. Some of our own research said that wasn’t necessary but we followed the vet’s recommendation.

[fumbalina]

I had a terrible time with fleas last year. I finally bought my dogs a seresto flea collar. In two days the fleas disappeared. I had tried diatomaceous earth, an organic mint house spray and a dozen other things. I did not have high hopes but they worked really well.

[pasdechat]

We had this issue last summer. We got Simparica pills for our dog and the fleas were gone in no time. It requires an RX from the vet.

H spoke with an exterminator he knows and he said that fleas are becoming immune to some of the topical treatments. The topical stuff did nothing for us that year.

[7costanza]

When we had a terrible flea infestation we sprinkled borax on the carpet, worked it down into the pile, then waited a few hours before vacuuming. We had to repeat this a few times over the course of a week, but doing that in addition to frontline directly on the car got rid of the problem.

[So_Fetch]

I'm going to second capstar. It's a pill that will basically kill all the fleas. It's disgusting to watch but works quickly. With your dogs history of seizures I'd check in with your vet first. But it is non prescription

[megstoo]

I would also treat the outside.

We switched from Advantage (I think that was it) over to bravecto. Bravecto is a tablet you give them every 3 months (prescription). About 2 months after we got our rescue we found out the "drops" that we'd been using are more likely to fail on short hair dogs. Our vet put him on bravecto and it's been awesome.