Want to Save Your Pet From Suffering and Save Money on Vet Bills? Start With Common Sense–Part 2
People who lack common sense may be good for my job security, but their pets often pay a price.
Fleas are vile blood sucking disease spreading parasites that are easy to prevent. They are extremely common in northern California.
A few days ago a client brought her cat to me. The cat reeked of patchouli. It was almost dead.
The cat’s gums were pale–a sign of anemia. It was weak and could barely walk. It was covered in fleas and flea feces.
The client told me that she and her cat had been battling fleas for several months. When the client noticed the fleas she applied witch hazel extract and then tea tree oil to the cat. When those failed to work, she tried bathing the cat in dish soap. Then she fed the cat a garlic-based herbal remedy. Finally, she applied patchouli oil–which was obvious from the way the room smelled.
I had to ask.
“Did you try Advantage?”
Her shocked response was no, she did not want to apply chemicals to her cat.
I resisted the urge to point out that tea tree oil, patchouli oil, and witch hazel extract are made of chemicals. I did, however, tell her that garlic is toxic to cats. Finally, I talked her into giving her cat Capstar and applying Advantage.
Ten minutes later thousands of dying fleas began falling off the cat.
I understand the desire to avoid exposing a pet to synthetic chemicals. In an ideal world it would not be necessary. But if your pet is dying from fleas, it is time to bite the bullet and use something that works.
I am confident that the cat will make a complete recovery. But the cat nearly paid the ultimate price for her owner’s lack of common sense.
Photo: Patchouli. Doesn’t cure fleas. By Kurt Stueber.
You have questions. 
I disagree with using pesticides such as Frontline, Advantage or K9 Advantix on pets for fleas. I personally have used nothing but apple cider vinegar (except for once using K9 Advantix) and my dog has never had more than 2 or 3 fleas at a time, even in the Texas summer when my neighbors dogs have used Frontline and had flea infestations. I used to use Frontline ever month on my previous dog and cat, they had a pretty bad case of fleas every summer, Frontline every month and it only lasted a week or so. However, if your dog or cat is literally DYING from flea/tick infestations, I would use close to anything, chemicals or not, to save my pet.
I would use natural methods (ACV and garlic (which is not bad in small amounts) ) for everyday use, but for serious flea problems, I would use a flea/tick med.
I am also concerned about topical monthly chemical flea and/or tick treatments; especially after some of the horror stories about permanently scarred animals. I am confused as to why anti-chemical people don’t know about diatomaceous earth. Of course, I would do ANYTHING to stop a major flea infestation that was hurting my animal (like, uh, bathing it?), but diatomaceous earth has been working for me as a great maintenance since using Advantage versus Frontline became a hit or miss depending on what the current population was resistant to.
Dr. Barchas, may I respectfully ask, why did you “resist the urge” to tell the owner about the dangers of essential oils? I cringe every time I hear a veterinarian fail to utilize that ever important opportunity to educate and potentially save lives. Too many vets “resist the urge” on various inappropriate, trendy, and alternative “medicine” fads, and the propogation just cycles and recycles. Every opportunity is a good opportunity to educate and that owner can educate another owner. The owner was obviously set in her ways in the magical thinking of “natural” remedies, how much do you want to bet she resorts to them again? Is that fair to the cat?
Judging by the amount of crap this owner was using, I’m surprised the cat even survived. Please, do not ever again “resist the urge” to educate them and potentially save the poor cats’ lives.
Although I’m a herbalist and use alternative therapies, not all herbs and oils are safe for your pets. I live in west central Florida (Gulf coast) where fleas run rampant. I have not had a flea infestation for over 15 years because I use diatomaceous earth. You can get the cheap pool filter stuff for your yard (reapply after it rains) from any pool supply, and the food grade from pet stores that sell aquarium supplies. You can dust it freely on your pets, work it into your carpeting, I put it along thresholds and around the edge of my screened porch. Farmers often feed it to their livestock to kill internal parasites. DE is simply powdered shells. That’s all. No chemicals, pesticides, or other poisons. It kills fleas and other tiny creatures because to them it’s like moving through shards of glass, so it also breaks down the flea eggs. I’m also careful not to walk through the grass and keep to the streets and sidewalks when walking my pets. I bathe them in pet shampoo containing neem oil which helps to repel bugs. While we can’t avoid picking up fleas and their eggs from our neighbors’ yards, whatever hitches a ride to our house doesn’t live long.
Crested Crew, since you know botanical/essential/terpene oils are unsafe for pets, why are you BATHING them in neem?! This is just as toxic to pets!
The supplement market has become big business. It’s easy pickin’s because it’s an unregulated orgy of vague promises. The “natural”/supplement section of my grocery store takes up about 1/4 of the store. Then theres the massive $$ generated by the MLM supplement empires. Along with this big business has come a huge push of the meme “if it’s natural, it must be safe”.
Oft when I do a search on something and end up on one of the answer sites, such as yahoo answers, I find that the answer that is permanently fixed as “correct” is often wrong, and sometimes downright dangerous. Yesterday I found this quote “My opinion is that anything organic or homeopathic would not have side effects and is completely healthy” had been fixed as a “correct” answer for 3 years.
Now I’m an herbalist, but I’m also a biologist. The two complement each other, they don’t conflict.
The fact is that some of the most, if not THE most potent toxins come from nature. Cyanide, probably the most well known poison due to it’s rampant use in fiction, is perfectly natural. Same with ricin. Arsenic & thallium are elements- as natural as it comes, and have the ominous nickname “inheritance powders”. Hemlock killed dear Socrates (”I drank what?”), while the Oleander lining the driveway makes a “killer” tea. Some plants of the Solanaceae family contain dangerous, deadly if misused (or used for the purpose), levels of tropane alkaloids. Some members of Solanaceae bear tasty fruit others bear tubers full of carbohydrat-y goodness that go good with lots of butter & salt. You can’t imagine how many people eat a handful of destroying angel or death cap mushrooms hoping for a trip- ending up taking that final trip into “the light” (unless they picked a natural 4-leaf clover and end up taking a trip to the liver transplant specialist instead). Nicotine is a wicked, wicked poison. Then there are animal poisons such as tetrodotoxin, or venoms which are fascinating mixtures of toxins. Of course theres also plutonium & uranium, which are difficult to refine & make go “boom”, but ingesting a little yellowcake easily found in nature does horrific things to the GI tract. I probably went overboard, but I wanted to drive the point home. “Organic” is word that means one thing to chemists, another to farmers, and another to health conscious consumers. “Natural” means “non-fatal” about as often as “automobile accident” does.
There’s a flip side to all this though- through science we’ve learned that in many cases these poisons can be cures in the right amount, or with a little tweaking. Those alkaloids in Nightshade are very useful once purified and used in targeted doses- useful for everything from heart attacks, to motion sickness on the Love Boat. The deadly foxglove gives us digitalis- one of the mainstays of cardiology. Sometimes nature needs a little help- aspirin was created by a chemist whose father was suffering from ulcers/gastric bleeds from using white willow bark for his arthritis. Or perhaps thats just a cute anecdote fed to pharmacology/med students- in any event, the acetylation of the salicylic acid from white willow bark made it safer than the white willow bark itself. Then there are all the antibiotic compounds derived from various molds. Anyway, It’s estimated that up to 80% of pharmaceuticals owe their origin to compounds found in nature. Don’t believe the hype that “anything natural is safe”.
In addition to diatomaceous earth, borax & boric acid can be used and act in similar fashions…. but I’ve still also been using Frontline & Frontline Plus since they’ve come out. Preventing fleas prevents internal parasites. Heck, Frontline Plus might have prevented the Black Plague taking out 1/3 of Europe ;)
The most heartbreaking anecdotes I’ve heard over the years have been from flea “dips”- which there are no need for with the advent of the new topical anti-critter meds.
Here’s an interesting piece by an entymologist on “organic” & the relative safety of some common insecticides. Not by any means comprehensive.
http://shalompest.homestead.com/Common_pesticide_toxicities.pdf
Hope something here helps someone. Also hope it didn’t sound too harsh. I see both sides of the aisle, and they are reconciliable.
The last two times (last time was yesterday) I put Advantage on my dog (19 months old), she paced nervously around the house for hours. I cannot put her through that again and would like to find some kind of natural alternative. However, at this point I’m thinking that daily combing, bathing with an all natural (rosemary–for dogs–which I have) shampoo, frequent washing of her bedding and vacuuming the rugs may have to be the solution as I just don’t like any of the solutions I am finding online.