If your pet is scratching excessively, losing patches of hair or developing scabs and hot spots, then your pet could have a significant problem with fleas. If fleas are on your pet, then they’re going to be in your house and in your yard, and probably on you. Fortunately, you can take steps using synthetic chemicals and natural products to both protect your pets and rid your home of fleas.
Treating Your Pets
First Step- Treat All Your Pets
Treat all your pets using oral or topical medications. Discuss with your veterinarian which prevention is right for you and your pet: You can use oral medications like NexGard or Comfortis, or you can use topical medications such as Revolution or Activyl to prevent fleas. All of them are reccommended, but keep in mind if your dog doesn’t do well with oral medications a topical solution should be applied. Also, if your pet has skin allergies/reactions then we would reccommend using an oral flea preventative.
- Be sure to use the correct dosage made specifically for your pet, as your pet can have a serious reaction to an overdose. Never use dog flea prevention on a cat, as a cat’s nervous system can only handle feline flea preventative.
- Give the flea preventative on the same day that you treat your house and yard for fleas for maximum effectiveness.
- If bathing, and using a topical solution, wait one day after your pets bath before applying flea prevention.
Step Two- Wash Your Pets Bedding
Wash your pet’s bedding as well as any cloth items that have been on the floor. Washing will significantly reduce the number of flea eggs and larvae on the bedding and cloth items and will make your insecticide more effective.
- The wash cycle will not kill the fleas, but it may eject some of the eggs through the drain. On the other hand, the dry cycle, on normal for over 30 minutes, will kill the eggs and any fleas remaining on the cloth.
- Do this all at the same time, removing everything at once and wrapping it in tied-up sheets. Keep the clean items wrapped in clean sheets or garbage bags until 12 hours after you’ve treated your house and your animals to prevent fleas from crawling onto the clean items.
Step Three- Let Them Roam Your Home
Allow your pets to roam freely around your house after you’ve treated the house and treated your pets. Fleas will smell your pet and will jump onto their fur, and they will be eliminated soon after they bite your pet’s skin.
Step Four- Keep Your Pet Inside
Keep your animals inside as much as possible for 30 days. If your animal must go outside, keep it away from long grasses, fallen leaves, gravel areas or sandy patches.
- If you have a dog and you need to walk the dog, try to stick to pavement for this first month. While your dog or cat isn’t toxic to fleas jumping on them, you are trying to eliminate a nasty infestation, and you don’t want to introduce new fleas to your pet when you are trying to kill off the old ones.
- If possible, keep pets inside during the winter months, especially cats. Quarantining your animals can save you money because after your infestation is eliminated, you only need to keep up with maitenance flea prevention.
Step Five- Keep Your Pet On A Preventative
Continue to treat your pets with flea preventative every 30 days. This is considered maitenance and will help to keep the infestation from coming back.
Treat Yourself, Your House, and Your Yard
Step One- Use Mosquito Spray Containing Deet
Apply mosquito spray containing DEET to your socks, ankles and the cuffs of your pants every single day to prevent flea bites.
- If you’ve treated your pet, the fleas will be killed on contact with its blood. However, you haven’t been treated with flea preventative, so your blood will still make a tasty snack. Fleas only need a single blood meal to lay more eggs, so you want to deny them their food.
- After 30 days, you can probably stop worrying about applying the DEET mosquito repellant to your ankles. If you no longer see fleas jumping around, then you are definitely safe. However, if you still see visible fleas or have bites on your ankles, then continue spraying with mosquito spray.
Step Two- Clean Your Floors
Clean your floors thoroughly. This cleaning should include carpeted surfaces as well as smooth surfaces.
- Vacuum all carpets, rugs and upholstery. Place one entire complete flea collar in the vacuum bag. Vacuuming not only sucks up fleas, eggs and larvae, but the vibrations from the vacuum cleaner also cause fleas to hatch from their cocoons. Since insecticides can’t kill fleas in the pupa stage, getting as many of them to emerge as possible gives you a great chance of killing more fleas. Throw the vacuum bag away in an exterior garbage container after you’re done.
- Mop smooth floors. Use a cleaning agent like Pine-Sol or undiluted apple cider vinegar to cause the fleas to emerge from holes and cracks so that they are more exposed when you spray or fog your house.
Step Three- Treat Your Home
Purchase flea control spray or fogger, read instructions, and make sure you have enough to completely bomb your entire square footage of every room. You need to make sure that the product kills flea eggs, so look for a product containing an insect growth regulator.
- Spray your carpets, rugs, furniture, baseboards, along walls and on your pet’s bedding. Make sure to follow the directions on the can.
- Don’t miss door edges, corners, floors with cracks and underneath furniture and furniture cushions. Flea larvae love to hide in dark places even if your pet is too large to crawl under your furniture.
- If you use a fogger, you still need to spray the areas that the fogger can’t reach.
- Spray your house again two weeks after the first treatment. Many of the fleas in your house may still be in cocoons, or in the pupal stage, where insecticides can’t reach them. Spraying a second time ensures that you’ll catch the fleas that were in cocoons during your first spray.
Step Four- Treat Your Yard
- Remove debris like fallen leaves, grass clippings or other organic items before treating your yard. Also, mow your lawn before you spray.
- Make sure to spray all shaded or partially shaded areas. These can include inside dog houses, beneath trees, shrubbery and bushes or beneath your deck or porch.
Always consult with your veterinarian on a major flea infestation. Your veterinarian will give you detailed instructions and will tell you the best products to use to treat your pet, your home and your yard.