The holistic approach to flea and tick control detailed below helps reduce the need to give cats and dogs potentially harmful new anti-flea and tick medicines (as pills, spot/drops on the skin, sprays, dips and collars). These new medicines do not eliminate ticks and fleas, and when there are many, the additional control measures detailed below must be adopted anyway. Any and all control measures are jeopardized when cats and dogs are allowed out to roam free in the neighborhood. Collars are especially risky since the chemicals are inhaled as well as absorbed by the animals and anyone sitting close to and petting the animal, especially children. These systemic insecticides that variously kill and disrupt the development of these and other parasites have to be ingested by ticks and fleas for them to work. This means that they must have at least one meal of the animal’s blood before getting the poisons in the medicated pet’s blood into their systems. Hence these new treatments do not stop infected ticks from transmitting Lyme disease, and also Ehrlichiosis, Q-fever, Babesiosis, Tick paralysis, and Rocky Mountain Spotted fever, or fleas from spreading the plague and Murine typhus or from causing allergic hot-spots in animals allergic to the insects’ saliva. Cold winter is the best control, but in warmer states the convenience of using these new anti-flea and tick meds. should be weighed against the risks to the animals. Any animal showing any adverse reaction---lethargy, nervousness/irritability, nausea, poor coordination, and more severe neurological symptoms, should be taken off the drug at once. Very young, aged, sick and nursing animals may be especially at risk, and those who have been recently vaccinated, since these drugs could compound any adverse effects of vaccinations on the immune and neuro-endocrine systems of companion animals.

My holistic approach to keeping fleas and ticks at bay consists of: Daily checking with a flea comb, closely examining between the animal’s toes, and ear-folds, noting any tell-tale shiny, black, coal-dust like specks that turn reddish-brown on a piece of wet white paper if they are flea droppings of digested blood. Any fleas and unattached ticks caught in the comb can be quickly disposed of by dunking the comb in a bowl of warm, soap-sudsy water. Attached ticks should be removed by grasping the tick with tweezers as close to where it is attached, using a straight pull---twisting will break off the neck of the tick and leave its head buried in the animal’s skin.

Next, vacuum all areas where the animal goes in the house every week thoroughly, and put cotton sheets over favored lying areas, such as sofas, carpets and floor surfaces with deep cracks or crevices where flea larvae can hide and mature. Roll up and launder these sheets in hot water every week.

For an already infested house, use insecticidal aerosols or "foggers", following all operator instructions, or call in a professional exterminator, and either put your animals in a boarding facility or motel during home-extermination only after each has been treated with a relatively safe pyrethrin-based anti-flea shampoo, or with an emulsion of neem and karanja oil rubbed into the fur. A second round of fogging the house and shampooing/dipping the animals may be needed since flea pupae developing in cracks and crevices in the house may not be killed during the first treatment and may subsequently hatch out and start biting people and animals in the home. Dusting the animal with diatomaceous earth (a super-fine, harmless powder of fossilized microscopic sea creatures, purportedly kills fleas and their larvae by desiccation. Birds often dust-bathe, probably to get rid of feather mites in this way.) Liberally sprinkling this same material, or borax powder that also acts as a flea desiccant on floors, carpets and in wall crevices, then vacuuming up after 24-48 hours, and repeating every 2-3 weeks during flea season, will help keep the home environment clear, provided animals living there do not roam free and come home infested. Some animals may not react well to this dust, which should be applied outdoors. When control-measures break down and fleas are found on the animal and cannot be kept at bay with regular flea-combing and other controls in the animal's environment, one of the safer flea-control products are those containing the oils and essences of chrysanthemum flowers that paralyze fleas,and are considered the least toxic to animals of all the insecticides; namely natural pyrethrins and synthetic pyrethriods. Repeated spraying, powdering or shampooing is often needed since not all paralyzed fleas die on first exposure.

Clean all porch, yard, patio and garage areas of old mats, debris, brush and dead vegetation where fleas and ticks may hide and flourish, especially in those areas where animals like to lie: and remove all old tires, plant pots and other objects where rain-water may collect, including clearing blocked gutters, and drain or fill areas where water pools, in order to control mosquitoes. Please avoid using ultra-violet light attracting, electrocution bug-zappers, and spraying insecticides that kill millions of beneficial insects, and instead put citronella candles out on the patio and garden areas as repellants, and put up insect screens on porches and repair door and window screens.

A small lamp with a 20 or lower wattage bulb angled low over a large flat dish of soapy water or vegetable oil will become a heat-magnet and trap for hungry fleas in an empty house, and this can be an alternative, when set up in different rooms, to fumigation, while on vacation or purchasing a new home where there were animals.

Spritz your dog or cat daily with a floral scented shampoo or hand soap, diluted in warm water, rubbing it into the fur and let it air-dry. This will change the scent signal of your companion animal and may help deter insect pests. A few drops of oil of lemon and eucalyptus, neem and karanja, or cedar and peppermint (or trial mixture of various combinations of same ) in a cup of warm water, shaken vigorously and then sprayed on the fur, especially around the ear tips to also repel biting and flesh-eating flies, may significantly help repel fleas and ticks and mosquitoes. The lemon and eucalyptus oil combination has been recently approved for human use by the FDA as a safe and effective alternative to DEET to repel mosquitoes. But be prudent especially with cats who should not be allowed to lick off these various sprays or hand-applied emulsions. Slicing a lemon and placing it in a cup-full of boiling water and after letting it stand overnight will provide a quick emergency potion that can be rubbed into a dog's fur and let dry to repel fleas and other insects.

A bed for the animal stuffed with cedar shavings mixed with crushed neem leaves and bark, and dried bunches of rosemary and lavendar may help deter fleas and keep them off an animal lying on such a bed. Few animals to my knowledge are allergic to these various plant materials. Pennyroyal has been advocated as an herb that helps repel fleas, but has fallen into disuse because it can be toxic if ingested.

There is no need except under the most unsanitary, tropical and sub-tropical conditions, to have to use potentially life-threatening, health-impairing and environmentally harmful chemicals to ward off fleas, like these new and very expensive anti-flea and tick and other parasite-eliminating drugs, that could put your animal’s health at risk and be of greater environmental risk than the benefits that you may derive from the erroneous belief that these new products will mean your pet will never have fleas or ticks. Only too often, inspite of using these products, animals get severe allergic reactions to flea bites/saliva, such that they are then routinely put on steroids, thus compounding the attendant risks of these products, especially to animals’ immune and neuro-endocrine systems.

Healthy animals are less attractive, for reasons that science has yet to determine, to fleas and other external and internal pests and parasites, whose whole existence is one of opportunistic survival and multiplication.

I have received many letters affirming this from readers of my Animal Doctor column. A classic example is one reader who wrote to me to say that her cat never gets fleas because she feeds her cat a natural home-prepared whole-food diet, and supplements his diet with Brewer’s yeast, while her neighbor’s cat’ who also goes outdoors like hers ( a practice that I deplore if it is not into a cat-confining and excluding back yard enclosure) always gets fleas in late summer. (She lives on the East coast).

So I advise giving Brewer’s yeast or nutritional yeast ( not Baker’s or bread-making yeast ), about one tea-spoon per 30 lb body weight mixed into the animal’s food every day. This, like taking B complex tablets, is the hunter’s and fisherman’s way of avoiding bug-bites, (though I would wish that as non-subsistence hunters they might find more compassion-filled modes of recreation!) A tea-spoon full of Flax seed oil per 30 lb body weight will also help improve skin and coat condition for both dogs and cats, though cats may do better on an organically certified fish oil, and for most breeds of dogs, but not for cats, one garlic clove per 40 lb body weight, chopped up daily and mixed into the food may also help increases resistance or deterrence to fleas and other opportunistic bugs from the invertebrate world.

Fleas, ticks, mosquitoes, bighting flies and other insects whom we hate and fear are far more ancient than we and our animal companions. Our irrational flea-phobias and tick-terrors are fanned and inflamed by the profit-driven, multinational petrochemical-pharmaceutical industrial complex, that advertises nightly on TV to billions of viewers world wide to convince us of the need and wisdom of buying their poisons. We should try to keep these creatures at bay with the least harm to all. And that entails a holistic approach to animal health, a kind of ecological diplomacy based upon the ultimate empathy of enlightened self-interest, that includes companion animal’s emotional/ psychological as well as physical well being, (the two being inseparable in making for a well functioning immune system ).

This means an optimal environment for companion animals that is not so stressful as to impair their immune systems , and that they are not already genetically compromised, or are victims of a lack of care-taker empathy and understanding. Nor are they deprived of a wholesome diet and appropriate health-care maintenance by veterinarians. Some veterinarians some see as pimps for the drug industry because they are still out there promoting and insisting on annual booster vaccinations to their dog and cat owner- client-victims, and selling these costly, broad-spectrum anti-parasite, anti-flea and tick drugs only too often when there is no need, making the risks outweigh the benefits to the animals and their clients. And then they add insult to injury by prescribing corticosteroid drugs when animals develop allergic reactions to insect bites, further impairing their already compromised immune systems.

The Hippocratic oath that human doctors are expected to follow is to do no harm, and the same holds for animal doctors. But the advice and administrations of the best of them will be to little avail if their clients are not mindful, informed and responsible care-givers to their animal companions, and who resist the temptation to buy over-the- counter and mail-order anti-flea and tick medicines and other animal drugs, and look for short-cuts and quick fixes to dealing with these and other pests, parasites and animal health problems. The best medicine is prevention, and a holistic approach to companion animal health in this 21st century calls for a revision of vaccination protocols, of feeding highly processed commercial pet foods, and of over-medicating, especially with so-called preventive medications like those sold to keep fleas and ticks at bay, when there are safer and cheaper alternatives with far less risk to animals' health.