How do you treat dogs and cats against fleas?

How come there's so many fleas so fast?

If you have a dog or cat with fleas, this can quickly turn into a plague of fleas in your home. Adult fleas feed on blood from the dog or cat. Once they bite, the bite itself and the flea saliva cause your pet to itch. Adult fleas lay eggs daily in the coat of the cat or dog. These are about 20 eggs a day, so this will quickly increase if the flea is not controlled. The eggs fall off the fur and develop into flea larvae. These larvae then crawl to dark safe warmer places to develop further. After two to three weeks the larvae pupate. When the circumstances are favourable the pupae hatch. If the circumstances are not in favor of the flea, the pupae remain in the cocoons until the right moment. This can sometimes take weeks to months. When the conditions are right, i.e. a good temperature and hosts in the environment, they notice this by vibrations, then the pupae hatch all at the same time. When a lot of pupae are present this results in a flea infestation.

Avoiding a flea infestation?

Step 1: Treat the dog and cat with a substance that kills fleas quickly.

In order to prevent too many adult fleas from developing, it is very important to treat all animals present that can get fleas in time with an anti-flea agent. Preferably a product that kills the already present fleas and at the same time protects them against new fleas from the environment for a longer period of time. There are spot-on products, flea collars and nowadays also tablets (only available through the treating veterinarian). Good flea pipettes for cats are; Advantage, Effipro duo or Frontline Combo. And for the dog you can think of the following flea pipettes: Advantix, Frontline Combo or Advantage.

A very good elongated flea collar, which is also protected against ticks, the Seresto collars, both for the cat and the dog.

If you prefer something based on silicone that kills the fleas present by forming an impermeable silicone layer so that they die off, you can use the DIMETHIcare Line-on cat or the dog.

Step 2: Treat the environment with a good environment spray.

Always treat the environment with an anti-flea agent. Since only a small part of the fleas is on the pet itself, this is very important. To treat the environment, it is important that all flea stages of adults, eggs, larvae and pupae are treated by the environmental spray. It is recommended that you first vacuum before treating the environment with an agent such as Indoor-x or DIMETHIcare Environmental spray.