Short Post
These last couple days I’ve actually gotten my ass out of the apartment and DONE THINGS that (1) require shoes and (2) involve seeing and interacting with other real live human beings IN PERSON*. It’s been great fun, but boy howdy, am I exhausted.
Infestation update: We never went back to Petsmart. I called the vet’s office, and her assistant told me the flea stuff I bought at the store was total crap, so I threw that away and emptied my pockets for the expensive prescription meds.
I put the drops on him a week or so ago, and the next morning I woke up to find dead fleas ALL OVER the bed. Good because they’re dead, bad because they’re FLEAS and they’re ON MY BED. Sam sleeps in his doggie bed in the living room now. I thought he’d be pissed when I locked him out, but he didn’t seem to mind all that much. Whatever, dog. I didn’t want your stinky butt in my face anyway.
The fleas never disappeared completely, though their numbers dropped dramatically and the ones that hung on were moving pretty slowly. Each morning we did a ‘flea count.’ The count bottomed out at three** before starting to climb back up a couple days ago, so this afternoon I gave him one of the super flea-bomb pills from the vet. Not sure how that works—the guy said something about it coming out through his skin.
Hopefully the combination of drops, pill, and no-sleeping-on-the-bed will banish those nasty critters for good. Keep your fingers crossed for us. I’m off to bed.
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* It’s been pretty pathetic, y’all. I’ve spent most of my summer so far talking to myself, my dog, the friendly Sonic carhops, and the people who live in my computer.
** A marked improvement over ‘uncountably many.’ Aleph-1, for all you math-types out there.
Tags: Sam
May 28th, 2006 at 2:13 am
I think my mom uses the stuff from the vet as well and I have not seen any fleas in a long while. You should probably wash/vacuum everything in your apartment again to make sure that they are really gone.
June 13th, 2006 at 4:16 pm
Have you considered taking the dog for a REALLY long walk and setting off a bug bomb or two (not 15!) in the apartment while you are gone? They do work quite well. Those drops/pills for the dogs are IGR’s (Insect Growth Regulators) they don’t kill the fleas, they prevent new fleas from reaching adulthood and having more fleas, but since flea eggs can lay dormant basically forever, unless you kill those eggs, you’ll be forever fighting them. Nuke ‘em and get it over with.
June 14th, 2006 at 9:14 am
I have! I bombed the apartment about ten days ago. I thought fogging my apartment with poison would absolutely be the end of the fleas, but they were still around the next day, albeit in reduced numbers.
This past weekend I also tried sprinkling flea powder into the carpet. That helped a little, but it didn’t eradicate the critters completely. I’ll probably try the bomb or the powder again, maybe both at once.