Flea Control

As a responsible pet owner, one of your main goals is to keep your pets healthy and happy. One way to do this is by keeping them flea-free!  Fleas on your pets are not only distasteful but can carry disease and be the source of allergic responses in your pet.

Before a flea reaches adulthood, they've gone through three other life stages: egg, larvae and pupae. Depending on environmental conditions, it can take between two weeks and eight months for a flea egg to reach adulthood, although the average is probably three to four weeks in most homes. That means that while the fleas might be dead today, in as little as two weeks your home and your pet could be re-infested with hungry adult fleas.

Adult fleas cannot survive or lay eggs without a blood meal, but may live from two months to one year without feeding. There is often a desperate need for flea control after a family has returned from a long vacation. The house has been empty with no cat or dog around for fleas to feed on. When the family and pets are gone, flea eggs hatch and larvae pupate.

The adult fleas fully developed inside the pupal cocoon remains in a kind of "limbo" for a long time until a blood source is near. The family returning from vacation is immediately attacked by waiting hungry hordes of fleas. (In just 30 days, 10 female fleas under ideal conditions can multiply to over a quarter million different life stages.)

Newly emerged adult fleas live only about one week if a blood meal is not obtained. However, completely developed adult fleas can live for several months without eating, so long as they do not emerge from their puparia. Optimum temperatures for the flea's life cycle are 70 - 80 degrees farenheit, and optimum humidity is 70 percent.

We encourage you to have your pet examined regularly to check for fleas.  You can see them scurrying about on the skin especially on the abdomen, or detect their presence by using a fine-toothed comb over your pet and looking for "flea dirt", black coffee ground consistency particles in the comb, a sure sign of fleas! 

Our doctors will work with you to prescribe a treatment or preventative program for managing flea problems with both your pet and the pet's environment. Remember, if even one flea or flea dirt is seen on your pet, it may mean that your home has many more just waiting for your pet to walk by to jump aboard!