grooming & protection from fleas and parasites

[antimatter]

My vet is recommending Advocate for my JRT. My friend's small dog wasn't treated properly and got quite itchy. Vet had to give him a jab to stop poor dog from scratching himself till it bled from mites and said that the meds put on coat once a month would be enough.

I started reading about shampoos/sprays which should repel fleas and mites and there's such a big choice so am hoping that other dog owners could recommend some brands. I sometimes use just any odd shampoo from Pets at Home. He also had been groomed at a local parlour once.

Or perhaps if he is taking monthly medicine I shouldn't worry about buying anything else.

Advocate works really well, by washing to soon to treatment you run the risk of removing the product.
one of our dogs only needs the Advocate - a wire coated Daxie
our other, a Shih Tzu x has far more hair and seems really prone to any of the little buggers, he needs a wash by the end of week three (stinky little whatsit anyway) I use either the black tube fox poo shampoo or Bob Martins
tbh I think anything that is tea tree or similar as a repellent is good but you'll have to wash regularly to keep up the effect and that probably wont be good for the coat?

Advocate, Frontline and most of the spot on insecticides need the oil in the coat and fat in the skin to work. If you shampoo before you use any of these it won't work anything like as well. If the dog is dirty from flea dirt etc, bath him/her but wait a good week or so before using a spot on or Frontline spray so the oil and fat has had a chance to build up again. I find using the household spray works brilliantly (so long as you don't have birds or fish in the house) leave it down before vacuuming though, it works better.

If you use flea repelling shampoos you might as well flush the money down the toilet.
If I had a pound for everytime I had parted the itchy dogs hair and found the running fleas an been told 'he can't have we only used pet shop flea shampoo yesterday'.
Flea treatment is very much a buy cheap buy twice product.

thanks for the tips

I will therefore stick with Advocate for now

his current treatment was over a week after grooming so that was not wasted :)

another question - this time vet had to empty his glands in his bum - does anyone do you it at home? I have no qualms to learn to do it myself with gloves. I saw instructions on the net with details explained.