fleas. help me before I burn my house down.

dande2129

I have two dogs; a toy rat terrier, Stella and a chocolate lab, Carson.

Stella is 6 and Carson is 9 and I have never had any issues with fleas. Each year, they've been treated with Frontline and I didn't give it a second thought.

Enter November, and I noticed the "flea dirt" on Stella. Then I saw the fleas. Not a lot, just 4 or so. Granted, she's a small dog. I searched and searched on Carson but didn't find anything. To be safe, I gave him a flea bath as well, threw out his dog bed, washed everything, swept, sprayed the couches with the flea stuff, etc. I did everything there was to be done for several days to no avail.

It is now halfway through January and I am STILL picking fleas off of Stella. 

I tried this Doterra shit (no offense to anyone who is a fan) and I feel like I wasted $25. 

This is consuming my everyday life and I was hoping that someone would be able to give me advice on how to get rid of them once and for all, what works, what doesn't work.

HELP.

aggiebug

Fleas suck and can easily take 3 months to get rid of an infestation. 

First is the type of flea preventive you are using it needs to be an effective product and applied properly to both pets.

 Frontline is a great product, but we are seeing pockets of resistance.  Do you have ticks in your area? 

if so try Advantix, Seresto Collar, or Nexgard. 

if not you may also consider Advantage, Comfortis/ trifexis.   There are others but those are the ones I am most familiar with and have the best success with

They need to be given monthly but you can use Advantage/ Advantix every 2 weeks.

Do not, for any reason use a generic version of a flea product, some are toxic and the rest are just ineffective. 

Next vacuuming. This is the most important non drug thing you can do. Vacuum your house, under tables, under the soft furniture. If they get on the furniture vacuum the furniture as well.  When you are done vacuuming toss the bag or empty the canister into a plastic bag and wash the canister with hot water and a touch of bleach.  Repeat weekly until you haven't seen a flea for a month.

Clean linens on any beds the sleep on, including your own in hot water if you can. and vacuum the insides of the dog bed/ your bed. 

This should eventually break the cycle and elminate the infestation but it takes time and hard work for certain. 

RedheadBaker

The only thing that worked for us to get rid of fleas was food-grade diatomaceous earth. We ordered it from Amazon.