We have a dog and three cats, who all go in and out. We have NEVER had fleas before because we use Frontline monthly on all the pets. We live in the south where the pets have to have flea control year round. Somehow, we got a flea infestation and I can't get rid of them! While on Frontline (and I haven't missed a dose) I've given all pets a flea bath, a Capstar tablet, and sprayed EVERY carpet and apolstered surface with Knockout E.S. that I bought from the vet. I have also washed all bedding on hot, and washed all the laundry in the house. This was on Monday that I did all this. This morning, our dog was biting at her tail again and we found another flea on her! It was alive too! How can this be?!?! What else can I try to get rid of these?!?! We could really use a hard freeze in North Carolina. I've heard they are so bad because it never froze last winter. So, join me in praying for a few weeks of COOOOOOLD weather please! Any advice appreciated!
I hate cold weather but the fleas are so much worse when the winters are mild in NC. I had to set off those room flea foggers last summer when out daughter let her cat stay in her room.
I have no advice, but wanted to tell you that this has been discussed before with great suggestions. Try searching the site. Good luck.
We went to sign a contract in a house we were going to rent. After the contract was signed we walke out, and Oh. My. God. The fleas were CRAWLING all OVER my sons! On their faces, hair, clothing, and then on MINE and *gag* oh my god it makes me sick to this DAY!!! Oh my lord! It was a severe infestation, and we had to bomb twice, and then spray the carpet every week for 2 months to get them away. However, we didn't have a pet at that time, so I don't knwo what you would do for them. eh. Sorry about your problem. I truely do feel bad.
Is Frontline the one that makes any fleas infertile? If so, patience is the best thing at this point. If you get the inside mostly clean, any one you miss or they pick up from outside can lay eggs, but those eggs aren't fertile and won't hatch. Also, when you run the sweeper, be sure to change the bag when you're done. They will actually hatch in the bags and can spread. You might also want to increase garlic in your cooking; that's suppose to help! We actually put my dog on garlic pills for a while!
Thank you! I'll search the site for more suggestions too! I heard someone mention putting a flea collar in the vacuum cleaner bag, so I'm going to go out and buy one so I don't have to throw the bags away. So far, no fleas on the humans but oh my gosh....I will never sleep again if one does jump on me!
We're fighting them here too. We've been trying to control them on the animals. We use Frontline too, but we finally had to just bath them and drench them in flea spray. I brushed baking soda into the rugs and let it for two hours before vacuuming it up. The theory is that the baking soda will dry out the flea eggs if there are any. We did try the flea trap trick to see if we had a real house infestation or just a pet problem. You put a bit of vegetable oil or a bit of water with soap in a pie tin and set a light directly over it. Turn off all the other lights for the night. Fleas are attracted to the light and jump into the pan and get trapped. We only caught one, so we assumed that they weren't entrenched in the house yet. I think it takes months of diligence to get rid of them. Nasty critters!
We had a flea problem once. I get it, we're in GA. Fleas are a year round problem. And it's almost IMPOSSIBLE to get rid of them once you get them. We were using frontline as well. Set off bombs twice, used carpet powder, everything we could think of. We finally had to call out a professional. The problem is, you have to kill them on the animal(s) and in the house at the same time or one will re-infest the other. What we did was take our dog to the vet to be groomed and dipped while our bug man came out to bomb the house. Our bug man said to switch to another brand of flea spray for the dog. Just like bacteria become resistant to antibiotics, the fleas may become resistant to whatever you use for flea treatment.
We had a bad flea infestation this past summer. We treated the cat first, of course. We put out pie tins of soapy water at night with the lights like someone suggested and that caught some, we had a few dishes of soapy water on counters and tables that we dropped them into if they jumped on us and we caught them. We put salt on the carpet and after several hours we vaccummed it up. The thing that finally got them though was vaccumming. Every. single. day. I vaccummed the whole house every morning first thing and emptied the canister directly into a plastic sack after each room. I tied up the sack and placed it in a ziplock bag. I zipped it shut and threw it away. I had to do that every day for a month to finally get to the point where they weren't jumping on the kids or I all day. It was probably two months total before they were gone.
We moved house over the weekend and have discovered a flea problem. Now the old tenants tell us they had flea problems too. We're putting a bomb in every room plus one one in the attic and one under the house. We've also treated the cat.
