My husband and I are trying to decide which flea, tick & heartworm meds to give to our puppy. She is almost 16 weeks old and has not been on anything yet. We have a free dose of Frontline Plus and Heartgard that we are going to give her on May 1, but I have heard there are better options out there. We prefer to give her a pill rather than the topical treatments or using a collar. After doing some research, I am thinking of either going with Nexgard and Interceptor, or Bravecto and Interceptor. Any recommendations?
My dog had two seizures after taking Bravecto (within 6 weeks of each other). He is epileptic but he'd been seizure-free for 7 months up till we gave him the Bravecto. He also then itched like crazy for months afterwards. Since then I've read terrible things about all the oral chews (incl Nexguard, Simpirica). You're feeding your dog a pesticide that kills insects by affecting their nervous system. It can also affect the nervous system of your dog, and in fact the Bravecto sheet for the topical warns that it can cause seizures in dogs that have never had seizures before. Furthermore, it is not a repellent so the fleas and ticks need to bite your dog to get a blood feed in order to die. There is thus a chance your dog could get infected by a tickborne disease. The most important thing though is that Bravecto warns not to give to puppies under 6 months. So your pup is too young even if you were considering it. My recommendation is to use a product you can remove if your pup has adverse effects, such as a collar. But first check if your dog actually has fleas and if you even need to treat for fleas. And find out if you have tickborne diseases in your area. Your vet is the best person to advise on this. We don't use anything on our dog. We don't have tickborne diseases in our area. And we wash and sun his bedding regularly and vacuum often as a precaution against flea eggs.
Thank you for the info. Yes, we knew we would have to wait until she is 6 months old to use Bravecto. Ticks and tickborne diseases are very common in our area, so we definitely need to have her on something. Perhaps the topical will be a better choice for us.
Any medication that actually works has some risk of side effects for some dogs. Spot ons are no different. You have to balance the risk of the parasite against the risk of the medication. Usually the risk of the parasite is the far greater risk, by a long, long way. Most dogs have no issues resulting from these medications. It's best to talk with your vet about the kinds of parasites in your area and what the best treatment regime would be. For example, for us, heartworm and intestinal worms are the main issue, so we treat with an annual hearworm injection and 3 monthly Milbemax tablets (to cover other worms). When we go to the coast ticks are a big problem so we give him Nexguard to cover that.
I agree, talk to your vet and take advice. I've used Bravecto, with no side effects, but I wasn't happy that it wasn't a deterrent and in the summer I live somewhere where ticks are incredibly numerous, so they were still being brought into the house on the dogs' coats. Yuk! It was 100% effective at killing those that attached, but where they hadn't yet attached, they were alive and kicking, ready to leap onto me at the earliest opportunity - which never happened, but I was very aware of it and twisted into all sorts of shapes every evening in front of the mirror to try to see if I had any on me! Anyway, my routine for this summer is this: The Advocate and Advantix being staggered by two weeks. This covers all the things I have to be concerned about where I live. Yes, it's a lot of medication, but I'd rather that than my dogs being infected with leishmaniasis, or heartworm, or any of the many tick-borne diseases. Ick, now I'm all itchy!!
Thanks for raising this question Joanna. We have the same dilemma. We plan to ask for the vet's advice when he gets his first vaccination on Monday. However I'm still nervous about their advice. We have a few relatives working in human medicine, and know that it is a murky world when it comes to what drugs are recommended for humans, what pressures or "incentives" there are on doctors to prescribe certain drugs and who makes money out of them. It's not that I don't plan to listen carefully to what the vet has to say (I do!), but at the back of my mind there will always be some level of scepticism. But on the positive side, I think most vets do the job because they love animals, whereas not all doctors do the job because they love humans For info, we have ticks here, carrying Lyme's and TBE. We have vaccinated ourselves against TBE and want no less protection for our puppy.
Dontrol, Advocate regularly and then topped to with Advantix for summer months prior to and during Summer holidays.
