Published: 12th September, 2014 in: Health Advice News
The following post is from Frontline.
While you’re out and about enjoying autumn, whether in the city or the country, you might see many lovely coloured trees and leaves. But what you won’t see is the hidden problem of parasites.
The leaves may be falling, but that doesn’t mean the risk of your pet suffering from fleas or ticks is. Tiny ticks can be found in all sorts of outside areas – gardens, parks, fields, heaths. They wait at the edges of leaves and vegetation for a passing host, jump onto them and attach to feed, piercing the skin and cementing their mouth-parts into position. When feeding, ticks can transmit infectious diseases that have serious health implications – in fact they’re second only to mosquitoes in transmitting infectious diseases to humans and animals. One such disease ticks can transmit is Lyme disease, which affects people too – incidences of this disease in humans has increased by 300% since 2000*.
To protect your cat or dog from ticks, use Frontline Spot On regularly once a month. This treatment kills ticks before they get to the stage of feeding when they are most likely to transmit disease. It also kills fleas – another parasite to be wary of.
Through the warmer weather of the summer, fleas have been feeding and breeding on animals. The eggs they’ve laid have fallen off and scattered everywhere the animals they were on have been – again, outside areas such as gardens and parks, but also inside areas such as people’s homes. Because female fleas lay up to 50 eggs a day each, there are millions of eggs about at the moment, with fleas developing inside them and waiting for the signal to hatch out. It’s the warmth, carbon dioxide and vibrations that come from animals like you cat or dog that provide those signals.
Unless you keep up with the regular treatment of your pet, these new fleas can jump on your cat or dog and start the life cycle all over again. This can lead to infestation because, by the time you notice fleas on your pet, there will already be many more flea eggs and life stages around your home.
To help get rid of these life stages, regularly vacuum your home and wash the pet’s bedding above 60 degrees Celsius. And to keep on top of fleas, regularly treat all cats and dogs in your household with the fast-acting, long lasting Frontline Spot On, to make sure none of them harbours infestation.
*Source: Health Protection Agency
Use medicines responsibly.