Ace or Ace-Chan (as we have nicknamed him) is a Miniature Australian Shepherd, Blue Merle, with one Blue & one Brownish/Grey Eye!
He was born on January 20th 2010 in Alliston, Ontario (Just about 1.5 hours North of Toronto).
He arrived at his Forever home to his new human mommy & daddy on March 10th, 2010!
Ace now lives with his mommy (me) in New York! Follow us as we start fresh and have adventures in New York!

Be our FUR-riend!

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

OMG FLEAS!!!

YES! ACE GOT FLEAS!!!

So today, Ace was sitting on my bed while I was checking some email and I noticed he started scratching himself a lot, which he never does...and my heart sank and I thought...Noo......
Sure enough, I parted his thick fur and all these little black things are marching around!!!!!
SOOO GROSSS!!!
I literally grabbed him under my arm, ran to find my uncle (he has flea shampoos for his dog) and we bathed Ace outside with a flea shampoo!
You could see the fleas falling off...dead from the shampoo!!!
It was awful! I felt SOOO bad for Ace!!
Turns out, because it has been SO hot, fleas has infested my grandmothers yard. There are a lot of dogs in the neighbourhood and they will randomly walk through the yard sometimes, so who knows if they have fleas??!? Well my uncles dog, who lives outside gets fleas from time to time and he currently had them!! 
I think that this morning when I let Ace out, he ran over to my uncles dog's pen area before I could stop him! I think he might have picked them up from him!!!! (the vets said that even if a dog living in a certain area of the yard gets fleas, usually the whole yard gets them...)

AHHHH. I'm sooo grossed out! I called our vet back in Toronto and she said that even though I use Revolution on Ace, because of such a large quantity of them, the medicine cannot keep up!
So a flea bath now...and then once again right before we leave to NY. She also said to make sure my Dad's pets are protected against fleas to prevent an infestation at their house!!!
How horrible!
I had to wash everything, I sprayed everything, and there were still a few fleas on Ace when I checked him this evening....I tried to pick them off, but Ace jumps and fidgets with me!
The vet also said that because we used the shampoo, it SHOULD kill any left over adult fleas (also the revolution will kill them too) but I didn't realize they have so many life cycles and that we might see fleas for the next few weeks!!!! But just less and less of them...
AHHH....
My poor baby!! He is exhausted after all the commotion!! He is in my room now, sleeping in his crate, but I feel like my skin is crawling!! I keep itching, but I think or HOPE it is just the heebie jeebies!!

If anyone else has dealt with fleas on their poor furbaby, I would love advice!!
It would be SO helpful!! I want Ace to be 100% flea free!!!!!
*I hate flea baths....*


11 comments:

  1. Poor Ace, but it happens to the best of us! I am sure the Revolution and flee bath will take care of things! Poor guy!

    Your pal, Pip

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey- OMG, okay. Gross. Kirby hasn't been around long enough to pick up fleas yet, but our cat... Yuck. Our cat has bad skin, and he was on... Frontline I think it is called? Anyway... he would just yowl and yowl, and we couldn't figure it out. Finally we switched to Advantage, and it took like, 3 weeks, but the fleas were gone. The vacuum is your friend. There are like 900 life stages (or like 4) that fleas go through, and revolution/flea treatments only kill adult fleas, which prevents them (hopefully) from laying eggs. Then they fall into your carpet off the dog, and when they grow up they jump back on. The more you vacuum, the better off you'll be! As far as outside goes... well.. there isn't a whole lot you can do there. :P Good luck! That's awful. Poor guy!

    ReplyDelete
  3. You're gonna have to pick them off! Poor boy!
    We use Frontline. It is either a spray, or you can put it on the neck. We hope they all go away!

    ReplyDelete
  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  5. ACK!! dash doesn't get too many fleas. we give him a chewable comfortis pill monthly. he only gets the occasional tick from hiking, and those are pretty easy to find and pick off if they haven't latched on yet.

    i remember my grandma in HI used to bathe her poodle outside and pick off the fleas one by one and drown them in soapy water. she used to say they are very hard to kill just by smashing.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Poor Ace! I hope that the fleas are gone soon.

    ReplyDelete
  7. We use Frontline Plus (we switched after a disgusting tick incident!!) that kills fleas, ticks, and their eggs. It is super hot here in Texas so we use it once a month year round. We have no problem at all with fleas even though rabbits live in my neighborhood and we take the dogs all over the place where they can pick up critters! I used to have to give my westie growing up flea baths, bomb the house, etc and I won't ever go back to that! The flea/tick preventatives are kind of expensive, but well worth it to not have to do flea control all the time!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Roo feels so bad for you and your family Ace. I had two (count em TWO) horrible flea infestations this year. Cause it got so cold this past winter, then rained a lot then got hot they just bred like alien invaders! Yuck!

    This is what my parents did...
    First tried Hartz flea bath. Killed the fleas but the soap washed off my Advantage (like Frontline). And soap dries my skin so worsened the itching. We switched to a Neem Dip from Tropiclean; much better. Organic, no soap, soothes bites, and kills fleas. Good!

    But the fleas were all in the yard so first we tried dusting the ENTIRE yard (more than once) with food grade diatomaceous earth (suppose to work mechanically to kill the lil buggers but didn't. Then we called in the professionals and after $150 no more fleas in the yard. Good!

    We also used a mixture of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap (Peppermint Camping Soap) 1 to 4 ratio of peppermint soap to water as a spray that killed the fleas on contact for onezy twozy control.

    Final note: My humans have heard raves from a lot of other humans about using Dawn dishwashing liquid as a flea bath; haven't tried it ourselves though.

    Hoping you kill all the nasty buggers soon!
    Roo

    ReplyDelete
  9. Ah my puppy has just contracted fleas as well, we've frontlined and sprayed him, and now are just picking fleas as we see them. Its been three days and we're been good...so fingers crossed!!!

    ReplyDelete
  10. We use Frontline. Bandit can't use Advantage. Bandit may possibly have inherited the mdr1 gene from his dad, and Advantage is on a list of medications he definitely should not be given. We give him the application monthly. We've not dealt with fleas with Bandit. When we got Simba as a tiny little kitten he was just covered with fleas. We got him on a Saturday (late in the day) and couldn't take him to the vet until the following Monday. It seems to me the vet gave him some oral medication which took care of things. I hope you're able to get things under control soon. I know that must not be fun, for Ace or you guys.

    ReplyDelete
  11. No fleas or ticks up here in Alaska! But the mosquitoes can pick you up and carry you away!

    ReplyDelete