I don't see many fleas

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Does my pet have fleas?

I don't see many fleas

If you have seen one flea on your dog or cat, he has fleas. In almost all cases, there are many more fleas on the pets than you actually see.

Here are some other ways to check if you have fleas:

  • You can check for flea dirt, which is actually tiny specks of dried blood left by fleas when they bite your pet. Comb through your pet's coat onto a wet piece of paper towel. If the specks falling onto the paper turn red, your pet has fleas!

  • Another test to see if a particular room is infested is: Wear white socks into a room that you suspect has fleas, that the pets have not been into for awhile. Since fleas are attracted to vibrations, your footsteps will cause them to jump toward you looking for a host. With white socks, you will see the tiny (usually newly hatched) fleas that gather. This is not designed for flea control, but if you find more than about five fleas in a single room, you probably have a MAJOR infestation to deal with. The adult fleas that you find are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the flea population!

  • Don't forget that a flea only spends about 15% of his life as an adult. The other 85% are the eggs, larvae and pupae, just waiting to hatch out into a biting adult.

If you find fleas, you will want to check out the full story on how to get rid of them permanently at on our Solution For Fleas Page.

   

Comments

7/30/2006 10:13:00 PM
Josh said:

We've recently had a big problem with fleas.. they're pretty much attacking us all the time. We're wearing bug spray indoors, which helps some but not too much. We set off foggers/bug bombs in every room and that didn't even help.

What finally does seem to work is this:
Get a cake pan or some other dish, fill it partially up with water, put a small ammount of dish detergant in the water, and shine a lamp or nightlight over the water. The light attracts the fleas, they jump in the water, and the soap somehow keeps them from jumping back out. In just 20 minutes we got a good 40 fleas (in one room!).. and after that we stopped counting.

Do this every night as long as more keep jumping in.. it should help.




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