I can't decide if my vet is being a bit cheeky or not. I have just paid £55 for a pack of 6 Advocate pipettes. You squeeze it onto the skin every month and it deals with a range of fleas, worms ticks etc.
At 7 months she has been treated at the usual intervals but do I need to keep this up, and at this cost, forever?
I Woukd be interested to hear how everyone else deals with this? I am tempted to do it every two months rather than monthly.

I think that you can over treat especially with spot on treatments .
We need to treat I know, but I personally have decided to leave my dogs longer between treatments and I'm currently treating the rest of my dogs every two and a half months and Jethro no spot on at all. This is because Jethro has recently had an adverse reaction that has cost ££££££'s to treat and weeks to heal

These spot ons contain very powerful chemicals so I have often felt quite guilty about loading my lovely boys bodies with chemicals
I did tell my vet that I am treating less frequently because of my concerns and she didn't comment much.... just said that it was my decision to make but she agreed that Jethro must not have any spot on treaments ever again.

I only do dexter about every 6 months know he is older ,when he was young and we had a cat i would do it every 3 months.

Hi,

Not sure why you would need to be sold a six month supply , we buy Oscar's in one, two, or three at a time. Oscar uses the same and has never had a single flee or tick in nearly 5 years, and has never had any health problems, so I guess it must work, unless we've just been lucky . There are cheaper places to get this online, but it is a prescription medicine.

Oscar & hoomans.

We pay our vet £170 a year. For this we get Frontline Combo, to use every 6weeks. Milbemax chewable wormer to use every 12weeks. A yearly booster vaccine. Plus two vet check ups a year. Seems reasonable to me and Dude has never had problems with fleas, ticks, worms etc. Anny

We5kings - that sounds very sensible!
I have treatments now so I will use them every other month or so I think.
I think he was a bit cheeky and I will be a bit more questioning next time.
To add to it, turns out Advocate doesn't cover ticks. A learning curve.
Thanks for your responses.

That's right Advocate doesn't deal with ticks.
Our vet lets people choose depending on the kind of terrain they take dogs to. We do quite a lot of proper countryside walking which means Dude is potentially exposed to ticks. Because of this we use Frontline.
I can highly recommend the chewable Milbemax worming tabs! They are fairly new to us but Dude LOVES them He used to HATE the hard Milbemax tabs and I used to have to try to disguise them inside banana and peanut butter( his faves) and even then he could spit them out! Anny

I've drawn the conclusion we can over-treat for all ie ticks, fleas and worms. I agree it does depend probably on if you have cats, where you walk and live as to how often need to treat. I cannot recall the last time i treated for fleas (eek hope not jinxed the situ!) Ticks were a nightmare for the dood that enjoys the undergrowth and following his nose. He was covered in ticks. Revolting! My other doodle prefers a sedate preamble on the pathways so has had grand sum of 3 ticks.
I started using herbal? Billy No Mates tincture/liquid and is doing the trick.
Am pleased with this as opposed to having to apply very strong chemical spot-on product
For worming I have bought the wormcount test kit but yet to use them.

Please be careful with Advocate, it's very strong stuff. The first time I used it on my dog he went hyper and wouldn't settle down all evening. I stupidly used it again and he had a seizure, it turns out he's got epilepsy, something which I totally put down to Advocate. You don't need to do them monthly all year round, I use Frontline very sparingly and certainly not all year round, usually just over the summer period when fleas and ticks are most prevalent.

Some interesting observations on these posts...

Dude uses Frontline and never has a problem with fleas
Oscar uses Advocate and never has a problem with ticks

As already mentioned Advocate doesn't treat ticks, and it is well known that Frontline is no longer effective against fleas as they have developed a resistance to it (hence the move towards alternatives). It tends to suggest that often our dogs would actually be fine without treating them.

Like others I have concerns about putting chemicals in and on my dogs, so I only do it if I need to. I know there is a big concern about lungworm though, so what I do is send off samples to a lab for a regular wormcount. It tells me if my dogs have intestinal worms or lungworm. Most of the time they do not so I have no need to treat them.

Similarly, I do not treat against ticks or fleas unless they have them - so far this summer they haven't had a single tick, and no sign of fleas either so my view is treat a problem if there is one, but don't uuse chemicals for no reason. It's the overuse that makes them ineffective - look at the worldwide problem looming with anti-biotics and resistant bacteria!

What an interesting post! Definitely worth thinking about.

I don't use anything on Tess and she's never had a problem with either.
A few fleas once or twice on her head when she'd poked it down a rabbit hole and one tick once. I think the tick thing is because I'm lucky that there aren't many round here- so why bother to put stuff on her?
I worry a bit about lungworm though, not that she has any symptoms, but I guess wormcount would answer that one.

Well,I spoke to soon! Because he's black and curly it's impossible to be certain but I'm pretty sure Dude has a passenger! For the last few days he's been biting, particularly, his back legs! I Frontlined him 2weeks ago. I'm ordering Billy no mates. But, what can I do now? I'm combing him through daily. Help! Anny

We used to rely on natural methods such as biospoix spray and Billy No Mates. They did not prevent ticks unfortunately. We live in the Highlands and I was picking crawling ticks off my dogs all the time.

We have now resorted back to Advantix as this seems to be the only product that works. Repellling ticks is a very big and sensitive isssue for me as my 15 year old son has recently been diagnosed with Lyme disease. Proper treatment in the U.K is non-existent . We are now having to seek help abroad for simple antibiotics at great expense. It's a huge deal, so please seriously consider your methods of prevention. It only takes one bite and you could become seriously and chronically ill, with very little medical assistance.

For more information on lack of treatment, please watch.

http://www.itv.com/news/granada/update/ ... ung-woman/

Hi, I use Advocate and buy the six month pip and have used this all Willow's life and she is nearly six now. This is the only item I use and I now get a 20% discount from the vet as Willow is all up to date on vacs etc. She has had one tick in her life and I think only because it got trapped under her collar so attached to her skin. No other issues, no fleas etc etc.

Wouldnt change it at all just to save a few pennies. Part of the expense of owning her so accept this

x