Wormer and flea treatment for dogs

[SchnozzaHoomum]

Hi lovely dog mums and dads
Our mini schnauzer is 7, and in excellent health. After 6 years on Nexgard, our vet changed her treatment to Simparica. Suddenly she had cluster seizures and ended up in hospital. Brain scan and bloods were clear. We are assuming a potential reaction to the active ingredient in Simparica. Two months on, no more seizures, and I have her on a third of the prescribed drugs they gave us for epilepsy. I do not believe she has epilepsy and will be very gradually weaning her off this drug. We obviously didn't want to give her Simparica again. But the vet is charging £27 just for a prescription for Nexgard, which doesn’t even include the cost of the drug itself. I had a chat with one of the more qualified Pets At Home guys today, who explained how the additional benefits of Nexgard are prevention of lungworm and heart worm. Heart worm is very rare in the UK. Lung worm is low risk for us, as our dog never eats slugs, snails etc. My question is, can any of you fellow dog parents tell me about your experience of dog wormers and flea treatments? There are so many, and vets are an absolute disgrace. I refuse to be held to ransom by them. We are trying Frontline tablets (the one with the black and white spaniel on the pack). Any comments would be so much appreciated. Thank you.

Stressfordays
Your name sums me up 🤣. Thanks so much, I had no idea about this!

🤣🤣 I had a quick Google for you, there are even natural supplements you can put in your dog's food daily as a preventative measure. Worth looking into! I would struggle to give my dog medication if it had previously caused a seizure.

Our dog has Bravecto tabs 12 weekly and milpro monthly he was 14 yesterday and has been fine on this regime . I know 2 dogs locally who caught lungworm , one has residual breathing issues and the other was very badly affected ( fairly elderly ) and eventually had to be pts .

Drontal and Frontline are very old products they have been around 36 years or so. In its time Frontline was revolutionary lasting 4 weeks for ticks and 8 weeks for fleas, it takes up to 48 hours to kill the fleas and ticks.
We now know that to prevent Lyme disease the tick needs to killed as fast as possible and the newer products like nexgard kill in around 6 hours. And now that we know we have babesia another tick bourne disease in UK this will become more important.
Drontal is fine for standard roundworms and tapeworms, but does not cover lungworm or heart worm which whilst not yet in the UK is advancing rapidly northwards through Europe. It also makes a significant amount of dogs vomit and then it is ineffective.
They are not ineffective just inefficient compared to modern products and often their kill time is unacceptable to today's pet owners.
Over the counter products just have to not kill pets, but they are not regulated so don't need to prove their claims. So we know as original they were prescription products like Frontline.

@Needanadultgapyear So lungworm and heartworm are not an issue in the uk???
Like OP I'm going round in circles over this. My DDog had seizures which, contrary to what I posted earlier, I believe were due to milprazon (not Bravecto). I'm struggling to find an equivalent that doesn't contain ivermectin.

It is recommended to wormcount every 3 months.

If your dog has worms, this time period is safe due to life cycle of worms. You can test more frequently if you want to as it is so easy to do but no need

Lungworm is only an issue if not treated. If wormcount does show, they are present it is just the normal wormer to treat it.

Natural wormers are not proven to prevent or treat worms so I would not use them.

I would never put my dogs health at risk so regularly check for worms.

I have only had to treat 2 dogs in the last 20yrs for worms. 1 had tapeworm and a foster puppy had lungworm. All treated with specific wormer for the type of worms they had. All treated and retested to ensure all clear. Neither have had worms since but still tested regularly.

Simparica Trio monthly with Droncit every 3 months. All 4 of my rescue dogs doing well on this regime.

I get a single written prescription per dog for 6 months Simparica Trio, which I order online from Hyperdrug, as it is the best price that I've found recently. I then buy the non-prescription Droncit from any regular pet goods supplier.

Lungworm is an issue in the UK, heart worm is not an issue yet, but the parasitologists think it will arrive here in the not too distant future.

I am so grateful to everyone for taking the time to reply. THANK YOU! After huge running around in mental circles, I am putting our little rascal back on Nexgard Spectra, which she had problem-free for seven years, with Droncit for tapeworms - also never a problem. You have all been fab. Thanks again!

I would go with the worm count rather than constantly worming them, my dogs have always vommed after being wormed, which is why I don't routinely worm them now, it's so easy the general worm screen is just collecting a small sample from first poop of the day (they provide a spatula and pot, you double bag and fill in the info form, and pop it in the post, I got my results the following day, Lung worm is a little more involved as you need to keep a nugget of the first morning poops for 3 consecutive days and then again put it in a pot and send off they take 3 - 4 days to come back, they recommended every 3 months but I do 6 monthly and as I say my older dog is about to turn 10 and Ii think since she came home at 10 weeks she has been wormed maybe once or twice and has always been clear of worms, which surprises me as she eats fox, badger and rabbit poo regularly

Definitely do worm counts either way. Our boy was on vets stuff and still had roundworms. We used www.wormcountsfordogs.com and will do more often now. Hope your little schnauzer is ok!