Vets urged to cut back on flea and worming treatment

[KeenOtter]

Many people have been saying this for years. Lets hope vets prompt a more environmental and healthy approach to flea and worm treatment and less expensive!

Vets urged to change approach to flea and worm treatment plans

This is fascinating, and something I discussed with my own vet several years ago, so I'm really pleased that it's being reported on more widely now. It would be interesting to know if oral flea and tick treatments are less harmful than externally applied, spot-on treatments in this regard. I no longer use any spot-on treatment on my pets. My indoor/outdoor cat has had VetIQ Flea Guard, approved by our vet, for over a year now, and no fleas yet, so that's a possible alternative. I do still, reluctantly, give my dog a monthly tablet to kill fleas, ticks and worms - I've continued with this because we live in an area with a lot of ticks and she frequently comes in with them, and of course being bitten by an infected tick can make humans and dogs very ill.

Seems sensible to me, I tend to use preventative treatment in Spring/summer as lots of animals here, but really the way resistance to treatments has increased we are all going to be stuffed when they all stop working.
Horses seem to be treated much more conservatively in comparison, often getting worm counts done to check for a burden before treating, which is better for the environment, resistance issues, wildlife, the individual animal and the owner.

Oral treatment is a little bit less harmful environmentally but it has major impact on the resistance of the treatment on the fleas etc and still causing a large impact. The treatments are having to get stronger and stronger.

Tick are annoying. Most treatments kill the tick after 24 hours so they still attach. Generally checking and removing them when found has been more effective as the can be removed in less than 24 hours.

Absolutely worm counts are so easy to do. Harm no one and also if (and a big if) your dog does have worms they can be treated by a targeted treatment rather than a general wormer.

I have wormcounted for many many years on multi dogs and only 2 have ever had worms. Treated immediately and the dogs have never had worms again.

Some people think that worming your dog prevents worms it doesnt it just treats worms if your dog has them. So the dogs are being so over medicated

NC for this post
i work in a corporate vet chain. There is a lot of work and targets involved in reducing antibiotic use (due to the massive risk of antimicrobial resistance globally), which is important and to be applauded. The rcvs/vmd have classified anti-parasite treatment in the same category as antibiotics when it comes to prescribing controls. Unfortunately the corporates have not been so hot in trying to reduce/target anti parasite use because of client demand and it is the backbone of health care plans and subscriptions. I would love to see egg counts on the plans instead of blanket worming for example.

For years there has also been a lot of fearmongering about lungworm, which is dangerous to dogs but also rare, plus the human health risks from toxocara which does still cause around 7-10 children to go blind annually in the U.K.

Lastly, the regulation of over the counter flea and worm products is really poor so targeting veterinary prescribed parasite treatments while not tackling these older and often higher volume products is not a full solution.

I personally think it needs to be government mandated change, involving public education, because most clients want blanket prevention of parasites and the finance model of many practices would need to fundamentally change if this income stream was discontinued. Clients would still buy the products they want online so it wouldn’t necessarily help without widespread public education.

If you put your tinfoil hat on… it does make you wonder if big pharma would quite happily lobby government not to put bans or controls on the sale of certain drugs and chemicals (which I think has been suggested with some agricultural chemicals which kill bees and other insects)

Thank you for this post.

It is important that people make educated decisions for their pets and understand the impact of their decisions.

It would help if vets could be involved in this education and not promote products for other reasons

we got our first cat a few years and I thought it was a necessity to do front line every month? What do people do if not that? On the other hand my son caught lymes from a tick and it was awful how Ill he was and I’m super stressed whenever the cat brings one in.

I've only ever treated my cats when I've seen fleas on them. My oldest is 17.5 and he's been treated twice in his life time.

I very much doubt that frontline will be preventing fleas in your cat.

It is one of the treatments that fleas are now pretty resistant too.

Regular grooming, washing bedding and hoovering regularly will prevent most fleas. If you see a flea then you can treat your cat.

If you groom regularly just remove a tick with a tick remover if you see it attached to your cat. If you check daily just be stroking your cat this method will be more effective than the treatment as you will remove before you cat can get Lyme.

I only treat our dog if we are likely to walk her in areas with high sheep/deer population. We used to have a house in the Lake District so I would treat her every time we visited.
Our previous Lab seemed to be more prone to picking up ticks so did the better to be safe than sorry with this one.
At home, despite being rural, she has never picked up ticks and has never had fleas.
It’s possible that because we have hard floors the fleas don’t breed in our house. We also had cats when we had our previous dogs so maybe the cats were the problem.
We do walk her away from home but generally if it’s anywhere near water she will spend a great deal of time in water and mud.
Being a Lab with a double coat it may also be a deterrent.
Her diet has always been a salmon based dried food, she had problems with a lot of foods as a pup and her current food solved the problem. I wonder whether the fish oils deter fleas.
I still treat her but perhaps only once or twice a year. Usually in the spring and autumn.

I stopped treating the cat after noticing tingly lips when o stroked him after applying advantage. Only ever treated if we saw fleas which was rarely. When we got our puppy this summer I planned to do the same. However ended up worming monthly as he ate so many slugs and I was worried about lungworm. Then he got fleas when on holiday at the breeders (who didn’t flea treat). I found it quite stressful as he was very itchy and we were also visiting relatives and I was worried about him spreading the fleas to their house. With a cat it’s not such a big deal as they are only in your house (hopefully 😂) so any fleas in the house should be killed by the cat when it’s been treated. Whereas if I take the dog to someone’s house and he has fleas (if we hadn’t realised) we could go home and leave them with fleas. They’d then need to treat the house with pesticides which isn’t ideal (and my MIL would not like fleas!)

At the moment our worming and flea is one tablet. I’d prefer separate so wouldn’t need to flea treat as often but don’t like the spot on treatments as I think more transfers to humans etc.

I've had dogs for the last 20 years, currently I have 3 and I have never used flea treatments on any of them, none of them have ever had any fleas. I’m not prepared to expose them to unnecessary chemicals. I’ve recently read that when birds are making their nests they will use pet fur, we save our labradors fur after brushing for this purpose. The problem is that those that have had flea treatments are toxic for the chicks, it’s horrendous. If they do get fleas obviously I will treat them then, but not as a precautionary just in case.

I also only treat my dog if she actually has fleas that I’m not managing to clear with combing/shampooing, she has only had flea treatments twice (she is 11). She has some health issues which mean that most treatments are not safe for her anyway, so generally we just check her for fleas and usually manage to clear them quickly without chemicals if she has picked a few up.
I do worry more about ticks as we live rurally and a friend has Lyme’s. So far dog has only had one I think, at least that we spotted.
I have always felt that constant flea treatments must surely not be good for an animal’s general health ?

The effects of these treatments on ecosystems are really worrying. I cannot get my head around the habit of putting flea treatments on our pets every few weeks when there is nothing to treat! Pharma companies and veterinary subscriptions certainly drive the idea that this is something you must do as a pet owner. They are making a fortune.

DDog has never been treated for fleas, she has picked up a few in the past and with regular grooming we dispatch of them quickly and it's never been an issue.

We don't worm either. Healthy diet is the prevention. Many dry dog and cat foods are awful for their gut health and create conditions that parasites can thrive in.

We had puppies and I told all the new owners exactly this. Only treat did fleas if dog has fleas. I was looked at with incredulity

What dog food do you get?

Raw fed diet. Plus about 10% cooked and mashed veg mixed in. We have always used Durham for the bulk of her diet but there's several good options out there.
Also has 2 or 3 raw eggs a week, shell crushed up and mixed in. So good for them.

University of Sussex and Imperial College London has found that pet owners using flea treatment on their pets, risk contaminating their hands with toxic pesticides for at least 28 days after the treatment has been applied. Highly toxic pesticides used in the flea products are then flowing down household drains when pet owners wash their hands. Wastewater from sewage treatment works is a major source of fipronil and imidacloprid pollution in rivers – with concentrations in rivers exceeding safe limits for wildlife.

These chemicals have been regularly found in human tissue and blood and milk samples, in drinking water, vegetables and birds.
They're not completely harmless to mammals, so God only knows what constant supply of sub-lethal doses will eventually do to us.

fipronil and imidacloprid - these two drugs are frontline and advantage/advocate which are the main over the counter products. To protect the environment it is the over the counter spot on products that need to have better controls.

It is not only the spot on which are causing issues. Over use of the oral medication is causing massive issues with resistance to the drugs which has a huge environmental impact.

There is no need at all to worm your dogs unless they have worms.

A simple wormtest will let you know this with no impact on your dogs health or environment or create drug resistance.

We worm test but you can't expect the majority to get on board with it whilst vets are pushing regular treatments and health plans. You have to be quite confident to insist that it's sufficient.

Coconut oil works better for fleas anyway. Teaspoon in their food every day. They like it and neither has had a flea in getting on 10 years now.

None of mine have ever been flea treated and we've never had a single flea in the house in almost a decade of pet ownership.

We do worm them though as the cats go out and hunt and eat all sorts.