What do you dog owners use for heartworm meds and for anti-flea coverage?
Do you use flea protection during the winter?
There are so many products and they change from time to time. When I go to the vet, sometimes they give me something different from what I got the last time. It can get confusing.
I’d like to know your experiences with the different products and your protocols/procedures for administering them. For example, do you give the heartworm pill at the same time as you put the flea stuff on? Sometimes it feels like I’m bombarding the dogs with too many poisons.
Have you discontinued one product or another because of adverse reactions? (I’ll take my answer off the air. Thanks.)
I normally use Advantage, only because it’s cheaper for me to get the doses for the big dog and divide it among two dogs and four cats. It seems to do the job but I have heard of some people not having as much luck with it.
I don’t use it in the winter, since the fleas pretty much die out here in the winter. And I also don’t use heartworm medication as it’s so rare here it’s not worth the cost.
I use Heartgard for heartworms. I’m very careful to always give them on time, since heartworms are pretty common in the Southeast. I used to use Interceptor. About a year ago, I went at the last minute to pick up Interceptor refills and the vet was out. I switched to Heartgard and haven’t had reason to switch back. The dog likes the chewy Heartgard better too.
For fleas, I use Comfortis which is basically a monthly version of Capstar. Spot-ons don’t work on my dog; I think this is because she has very little coat oil. Comfortis is pricey (~$90 for 6 months), but it works. Since it’s so expensive, I don’t give it during the winter. In fact, Stella just got her first dose for the season a week ago. Comfortis can’t be given on an empty stomach. The one time I wasn’t careful about that, it made her sick. She remembers that too, because now I have to disguise the pill in peanut butter to get her to eat it.
Like you, I worry about bombarding her with drugs, so heartworm and flea control are 2 weeks apart.
We never used flea meds on our dogs during the winter because fleas die out here. When we discovered that both Frontline and Advantix don’t really work anymore, we read up on natural supplements and used a mixture of brewers yeast and garlic powder sprinkled on their food. Fleas don’t like the taste of either, so they’ll avoid biting. It worked.
They got Heartguard. There was a couple of times where we couldn’t afford it, though, and the dogs didn’t seem any worse for wear without it :shrug:
I thought you had to use different formulations for dogs and cats. In fact, the one I use on my dog states explicitly NOT to use on cats, and even to keep the dog away from cats for 24 hours after use.
We used to use a combination of Frontline and Heartgard, but the Frontline stopped working and we had fleas galore. We switched to Trifexis, which is a combination preventative for fleas, heartworm, hookworm, roundworm and whipworm. It’s a once-a-month, oral chewy thing that our dog thinks is a treat. She wears a anti-tick collar for the ticks (we live in NC, with a wooded lot). It all seems to work pretty well.
Generally that’s right, as dog flea meds can kill a cat. But Advantage is an exception. But like, I’d buy the 4 month pack for a 55lb+ dog for about $40. Each dose is 4.0ml. A dose for a cat under 9lbs is .4ml. That’s 10 months of flea medication for one cat in just one tube. So basically almost a year of flea medication for $10 for one cat. Since I have four cats, so an entire pack of a 4 month supply of Advantage for large dogs would last my cats almost an entire year. So I can pay $40 for doing it that way or $52 for one cat for a 6 month supply packaged for cats.
A lot of these drugs are available only by prescription in the United States. However prescriptions are not required in many foreign countries. So when you find the ingredients you want, search for them on eBay or Google.
My dog hasn’t had a problem with fleas, so I don’t use a flea preventative. I do give him Heartgard to prevent heartworms. I give him one once a month year round. If I do that, my vet doesn’t require me to bring him in for a blood test, as they recommend a test before starting a dog on a new regimen of medicine to make sure he doesn’t already have heartworms. The cost of the blood test just about balances the cost of six extra months of preventative, so I don’t mind giving him them year round.
Heartguard year round. It’s extremely common in Texas.
We’ve been lucky with no flea problems. Indoor only cat and our dogs don’t spend much time outside.
This is entirely correct. I just want to make it clear for anyone reading that the only Advantage product this is safe with is the plain “Advantage” or “Advantage II” and not any of the others in this family of products by Bayer (Advantix and Advantage Multi are indeed toxic to cats if they get the dog formula). The only other one I know of that can have doses split between species is Revolution. Please be careful!! I’ve seen the seizures and death caused to cats from getting the wrong topical applied.
Also, IM professional HO, stick to the stuff from veterinarians. I’ve also seen dogs have very ill effects from the crap people buy at the grocery store or Target.
As to the OP and the veterinarian switching products, this may be confusing (hell, I have a hard time keeping up with this stuff), but likely it is due to regional issues with parasite populations becoming resistant to products that have been around for a while. The original plain Advantage and Frontline products have started to become ineffective in some regions and the drug companies are always looking for the “next-gen” products that will continue working. Also, the newer products kill the parasites in more stages of life than the older ones. More of the newer stuff kills larvae and eggs as well as adults more reliable, thereby disallowing their ability to develop resistance.
And finally, there are newer products out there that also take care of intestinal parasites with just the topical application, so you are getting more bang for your buck with those, and more reliable prevention than with the oral deworming dose your dog might have gotten with his/her yearly checkup.