Does My Dog Have Fleas?

 

You can tell if your dog has flea's quite easily, first your dog will be scratching almost constantly. The reason they scratch is because when a flea bites your dog for his juicy blood. Saliva from the flea get caught under the skin this in turn irritates the dog and cause's the poor animal scratch himself to try to bring relief. In some case's dogs will have an allergic reaction to the fleas saliva.

About fleas
An adult flea is a brown-reddish insect with a laterally compressed body they are around 2 to 3mm in length, they have mouths that are well adapted for piercing the skin and sucking an animal's blood. They don't have wings but do have amazing jumping capabilities, there are 2000 plus species and sub-species of known flea worldwide. Fleas lay small oval-shaped eggs that are white in colour when they hatch the larvae are tiny with pale worm-like bodies. Which will then feed on all types of organic matter but prefer the feces of adult fleas. The female flea typically lays in batches of about 20 eggs and can lay up to 5000 eggs in its life-cycle. Fleas will infest almost any type of warm-blooded animal, including humans and our homes as well.

How To Check For Fleas

Ok so you can see your dog is in almost constant scratch mode and you know what you're looking for, its time to physically check your dog, to do this get him to lay down and start to search for evidence of fleas. One favorite flea hangout is at the base of the tail as this is a tough area for your dog to get to then check around the genitals, hind legs, the stomach the neck and the ears. Even though you may not spot the fleas themselves they will have left evidence of themselves by leaving their feces on your dog, you will be able to spot small specs of black dirt. To verify this is flea dirt, which is made up mainly of dried blood, simply smear some of the dirt on a damp towel if the smear is a reddish colour much like dried blood then you have conformation of fleas.

The next Step
Now it's time to proclaim war on these blood sucking misery makers, the first thing you should do is give your dog a warm soapy bath the soap will a kill of a lot of the adult fleas through suffocation, but it will not get rid of the infestation because where there are adult fleas you can guarantee there will be flea larvae as well. Second step is to brush your dog through thoroughly with a flea comb, and then its time for the specific flea treatments.