Fleas, if you have ever had the pleasure of dealing with these little gems you know how annoying they can be.  Often, our furry friends will bring them inside and grow their small companions into a legion of invisible blood sucking demons.  Owners will often find itchy flea bites on their arms or around their ankles.  When we take a closer look at our pets bedding we notice those 10 fleas have a solid home base of hundreds of maggots and eggs. They multiply and then multiply some more, they multiply until you are pretty certain they will consume you. Enter the magic of flea drops,….

Apparently a contentious topic, flea medicine is a staple of the veterinary clinic. “Why do I need to buy the flea medication from you guys if I can just get some from the pet store”

Well,… short answer is you don’t, you don’t need to do anything.  What should you do? Well ideally what is best and what is most safe for your pet.

I will concede, pet store flea medication is cheap, but price isn’t always reflective of value. Did I lose you? “blah blah blah, they just want to make money off selling their medicines” This is true, veterinary businesses would probably prefer to make a bit of money rather than lose it selling a product (so does the pet store) but that is not why I think it is important to consider purchasing veterinary labelled flea products.

Efficacy, er, how well a product will work and safety are key benefits of using veterinary flea prevention.  When things go wrong, and they can on the odd occasion, these veterinary pharmaceutical companies are usually more than happy to help owners out with the resulting vet bills.  However when supermarket or pet store flea medications are used and result in a bad reaction (severe allergic reaction “fire engine red skin”, seizures, vomiting/diarrhea) owners are left on their own. Further I have never seen a failure in veterinary flea med result in the use of a supermarket brand but have often had owners who have tried a cheap brand only to be left with a house full of fleas still waiting to be exterminated.

Some of the main challenges dealing with fleas:

1. They’re small! they’re fast! they are easy to miss until it’s too late
2. They have a tonne of eggs and larvae ready to move up the ranks
3. they multiply quickly

As a summary on why I think you need to consider veterinary flea medication:

1. They are much safer than the generic stuff you find at the pet store
2. Satisfaction guarantee, veterinary pharmaceutical companies are keen to make sure your pet and you are happy and will help you when that is not the case
3. They work! they work through attacking the whole life cycle of the the flea or through eliminating the possibility of reproduction in the flea’s life cycle.

REMEMBER cheap does not equal VALUE