best treatment for fleas....

hi all,

just spotted a flea on my boy last night!!! made my skin crawl....yuk! what treatments does everyone use? i've used frontline before, but i know it loses its potency if the dog swims alot. as i have 2 springers they just lurve the water (esp in this hot weather). any recommendations???? cheers peeps!!

I just put fresh garlic in Teagans food a few times a week.
She's never had fleas, and i've never used any treatments/products on her.

try rubbing 1 drop of lavender essentian oil, and one drop of teatree essential oil between your hands, and then on your dogs coat. This keeps the fleas off my boys

Also stronghold is supposed to work better for dogs that swim a lot but I'm not keep on spot ons

mmmm...might try the tea tree oil one cos i use that on my horse to keep the flies away! thanks very much!

If you saw it walking on the surface of the dogs coat it may well have been a stray flea from some sort of wild life probably a hedgehog, it will get off as quick as it hopped on. Try sitting your dog on a damp light colour duster of a few sheets of kitchen roll, comb down your dogs back a few times so any debris falls on the paper or cloth. Then inspect the cloth if any of the bits of dust are leaking into the damp paper or cloth your dog has fleas if not he does not or only one or two, the bits of dust that leak are flea poo and the leaking is blood.

I'm a bit wary of using spot ons too...... I have a garlic grinder and give each of the dogs one 'twist' of dried garlic in each feed.

Fingers crossed..... It's worked so far

i'm not too keen on the 'spot ons' either. think i'll try the garlic option too! i'll use the dried stuff i get for my horse!!! just sprinkle a bit on their food!!

Garlic is great for fighting the little blighters off My dogs weren't keen on fresh garlic so they had garlic granules instead. Did the job as well as

It may make the dogs breath smell but I'd rather put up with garlic breath from dogs than flea bites

think i'll go with the garlic option. gonna get a big tub of it from my local horse shop. it'll last them for ages! dont mind the garlic smell......might cover up the wet dog smell

Suki gets garlic regularly so hoping she never needs anything else but a treatment I used to use on my cats with 100% effectiveness was Program. It works by rendering the flea infertile - if it can't breed it just dies.

This means if you've treated the pet and there are still some lurking behind in a dark corner or in your suite these will eventually be taken care of too.

I had four cats at one point and never had a problem with fleas after using this treatment.