Dealing with Fleas

Once again I am dealing with fleas.

I have two rules for fleas:
First - Act quickly
Second - Be patient

You must act fast they multiply by thousands every day.  Give the pet a flea bath ASAP.  There is a "natural" flea soap that works very well.  In fact just giving the pet a bath helps.  I discovered some flea eggs and put them in the sink.  Whenever they came in contact with water they dissolved!

So just giving your pet a bath will help.  Keep him as wet as possible for 5 minutes, the eggs dissolve slowly.  I remember giving someones pet a flea bath a year a go and the water looked bloody, I thought I had made the poor cat bleed, but it turns out that dissolving the flea eggs turns the water red, so if it turns red you have a major flea problem!

Also a wet vac of the carpet will help kill them critters.  IMO do not waste your time on smoke bombs, they are almost worthless against fleas.  Besides water, use a carpet flea spray or just rip out the carpet and put in a tile or wood floor.

If you let your pets climb on the furniture then you will need to wet vac, flea spray, or toss the furniture too.  After the wet vac and or spray, cover the furniture with something so the eggs falling off your pet will not reinfect the furniture.  Wash the furniture cover every few days to kill any new flea eggs.

Then be patient, these critters keep hatching for a month or more!

Here is a quick update, after using a flea collar and still finding a flea or two we switched to the drops that you put down the pets back.  We were hoping they would be more effective.  After a few days I had to give the dog a bath and found about 10 dead fleas in the water!  The drops seem to be less effective than the flea collar!  Next I am going to see if there are more effective flea collars out there, and we are going to use lemon juice as a spray under his legs to help get rid of fleas.  We are also going to try to give him a little garlic every day to see if that helps too.  Its been about a month and we are still fighting the battle!