fleas (NicoleS)

If you have the patience, bathe the dog in dandruff shampoo (Head and Shoulders works fine) and use a flea comb but you gotta "drown" everyone you find in soapy water.

Borax works well on roaches - dunno about fleas. 

Got any old-fashioned Avon Skin-So-Soft? (bath oil) -- it really makes them less attractive to fleas (your husband won't like it but it DOES help)

He's gotten several baths with flea shampoo but will try head and shoulders next.

borax didn't seem to work -- still found live ones in the canister.  Not too many, but still -- any is enough!

diatomacious (sp?) earth will come on tuesday.  still washing and rewashing everything.  Ugh.  Hopefully we will win over these stupid fleas.

vet told us to use soap detergent, can not remember the name though, it was blue, we used it one time for both our cats and it worked.

I have frontline spray but with the nearly daily baths figured it wasn't worth putting on at this point.  I have deflea spray as well which (supposedly) kills on contact I can spray him with for the time being at least. 

I need to call the vet for capstar, correct?  If I can't get it under control in the next couple days I figured I would call them and see what they recommended anyway.  Sam has super short fur and a reasonable portion is pure white, so there's all that much of him that can hide fleas. I have a flea comb I've been using as well.  It seems OK when there are literally single or low double digit numbers, its just enough to make me insane.

We did another flea bath followed by head and shoulders.  I don't have Avon stuff (I react to a lot of that stuff myself so no need for it).  I've vacuumed more in the past few days than I do in a month!  And, disturbingly enough, keep getting rather full canisters each time   Shampooing the rugs would be next but I need a bit warmer temps than snowing will give me.

Thanks for all the suggestions.  Crossing my fingers :)

I swear amazon has everything.... LOL. 

That was Dawn liquid dish detergent that the vet told us to use for shampooing for fleas, it killed all the fleas.

Dawn and dandruff shampoo both work -- but they only STUN them, they don't really *kill* them.  So you have to comb them off the dog and DROWN them in soapy water.

If you leave the 'bodies' on them, they'll come back to life.  The soap ONLY stuns them -- it really doesn't kill them.  The only dead flea is a FLAT flea (they have to be completely totally **flat** to be dead. 

I would use Capstar for the dog to ensure the fleas are actually dying and don't keep bothering the dog.  Keep vacuuming, maybe put a flea collar in the vacuum canister.  For every one flea you see there are probably 100.  I only ever found three on Kenya and ended up having to treat the entire house.  Spent a few hours doing it and have never seen a flea since (that was 4 years ago).  For me the best and cheapest solution was to use something to treat the house that actually prevents eggs from hatching, rather than constantly having to deal with hatched fleas and try to kill them.

What did you use, Lies?  I'm also pregnant so have to be careful what sorts of thing I use in the house... at least the diatomacius earth is supposedly OK.

I can't remember exactly but it was not expensive, probably not any more (and maybe less) than home remedies since I don't have stuff like that on hand.  But I'm not sure about pregnancy, definitely something to check on (congrats, btw!).  My vet gave me a powder for carpets and a spray for hard floors and baseboards as well as the Capstar tablets.  I also powdered or sprayed all my bedding and the dogs' bedding and then washed it again.  I treated everything, let it sit for several hours, then vacuumed up the powder and opened all the windows for several hours.  It has some chemical that prevents eggs from hatching, so they just die.  No other treatments or continual removal of adult fleas.  I know it worked because when I went back in the house to vacuum there were dead bugs everywhere.  The product said it lasts for a year, but I've never used it again after that one time.  I didn't use a flea bomb because I didn't know how to shut off and re-light all the pilots in the house (gas dryer, gas furnace, gas stove with 4 burners, oven, broiler).

Diatamaceous earth isn't a home remedy - BUT it comes in food grade and NOT food grade.  If I were you, I'd be using only food grade (which you have to get online or at a groomer or such - you can get non-food grade DE at Home Depot but given that your pregnant the food grade would be preferable).

The shampoos were mentioned specifically because you're pregnant I think.