When You Get a Pet, It's For a Lifetime - His, Not Yours!

There might once have been a time when pets served as nothing more than burglar alarms and mousers, but in modern America, those days are long past. For most of us, our pets are part of the family - our fuzzy four-legged children and siblings, as it were. Family means they're yours for a lifetime, and that means you'll have to take care of them - which in turn means you'd better become familiar with pet medications.  You'll also want to look at the natural pet remedies which work just as well as the drugs and chemicals.

When your family members fall ill or suffer from some preventable malady, you want the very best medications (or natural remedies) available. The pharmaceutical industry has been considerate enough to take this into account, and has introduced a wide variety of pet meds of every kind you need to keep your furry family happy. One way to keep the kitties purring and the puppies playing is by making sure they're completely flea-free. Fleas aren't a disease as such, but they can cause serious quality-of-life issues for your pets. That being the case, effective flea control is a must, whether by chemical or natural means.

Flee from fleas!

The 2,000+ species of fleas in the world aren't merely annoying; they're dangerous, too, and capable of spreading diseases among both human and animal populations. Remember reading about the Black Death in history class? That was caused by fleas merrily jumping between rats and people and biting at will, and in fact is one thing that convinced people that housecats were a good idea. After all, they eat rats (yum!) and every rat down means a slightly smaller chance of infection. Fleas can also transmit diseases like tularemia and typhus, as well as various parasites, many of which can affect both pets and humans. On top of all that, in pets fleas cause constant scratching and unsightly hair loss, which is only magnified if your pet happens to be allergic to fleabites.

You've got a wide choice of flea control medications for your pets, ranging from old-fashioned flea collars and shampoo (which can be quite effective) to topical treatments that can kill fleas for months. The most effective topical flea treatments on the market, like Frontline and Advantage, use a chemical called fipronil to commit insecticide, sometimes with a bit of methoprene added. These compounds won't hurt your pet (or so they say, anyway), but they'll kill an entire animal's worth of fleas, usually in less than a day. Fipronil is the big killer, but the methoprene is even more insidious: it sterilizes any fleas that survive, and kills any eggs left stashed among your pet's fur.

Not convinced that applying chemicals to your pet won't do him harm?  Great.  It's good to be sceptical of pharmaceutical companies' claims.  They're often misleading.  Natural flea preparations work just as well, and best of all, because they're natural, they absolutely won't harm your pet.

Kill 'em at the source

Once you've ridded your pets of unwanted pests, you'll need to keep them off. One way is to keep your kiddos in the house at all times, but that's hardly realistic; after all, it's hard to train dogs and cats (especially cats) to use a flush toilet, and dogs mostly disdain litter boxes. You can't do much about the fleas on your pet's buddies, but you can handle the ones in your pets' immediate environment. Your best bet is to spray your yard with a wide-spectrum insecticide, though you can opt for a less toxic solution: a spray containing the nematode (tiny worm) Steinernema carpocapsa, which likes to munch on fleas. Apply it especially to areas that are shady and moist, because your little bouncy buddies can't handle direct sunlight. While the nematode solution may take longer than the insecticide one, it will also last longer, and will have fewer deleterious effects on the environment.

Published with permission (FCDMInc)

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