Never Use Pesticides On Your Dog

How I Almost Killed My Best Friend    

Every dog owner goes through this. Sooner or later your dog is going to start itching. You see them preoccupied with scratching and itching. My dog stares at an area like her back leg and waits for the flea to bite. The she attacks her leg like it’s a piece of raw steak!

Or maybe she sits and itches herself with her hind leg. For the dog , its torture to have bugs biting her. You know how you feel during mosquito season right? It’s the same for your dog although biting the flea rarely works. It may stop the flea from biting the dog but the chances of killing it are slim. So the torture goes on and on.

So most of us buy some kind of flea medicine. Topicals like Frontline or Advantix are popular. They are sold and advertised everywhere. No prescription is needed. Just buy the stuff, slit one of the liquid packs and rub it into your dogs shoulders. Why the shoulders? BECAUSE ITS POISON and you don’t want the dog to lick it.

I hated the idea of putting a pesticide on my dog, but I didn’t want to go to the vet to get a prescription for one the dog takes internally meaning he eats it. Im not sure exactly how this works. It puts something in the pet that makes them smell less tasty for bugs I guess. But that can’t be good for your pets internals so for me using the topical was a safer choice.

That was probably the biggest mistake I have ever made being a pet owner. Its one that haunts me daily.

My pet Sadie was a healthy Jack Russel terrier. She loved to run and play. She isn’t very coordinated and catching her stuffed animal toy had about a 50/50 chance of success. When she did catch it, I would clap for her and pet her. She would smile back. She was so proud.

When she started itching during flea season, I couldn’t stand to watch. She was miserable. I ordered a topical flea treatment, Adventca 3, which advertised as a copy of Advantix 3 at a lower price point. There were hundreds of positive reviews. It was still about $40 but that was more than 25% less than Advantix.

Sadie started getting lethargic after a couple days. She didn’t want to play at all. She’s a little moody sometimes so I didn’t think much of it. Then her belly, which is normally pink and splotchy like a cow turned red. I immediately tried to wash the stuff off her. She got worse and worse. Within a week she was having trouble walking. I went into a panic.

I took her to the vet who did a full exam. They said it probably wasn’t the flea treatment since they found no burns on the skin. She was probably just allergic to something. They gave her a shot and an antihistamine and she seemed to feel better for about a week.

The red skin slowly turned black. I assumed it was like getting a sunburn. The black skin would eventually flake off to new skin underneath. Eventually that did start happening. Now she was itchy for a different reason.

But something odd began to happen. All the skin on her beautiful little black nose started to peel off. She started getting sores on her paws. It hurt so bad she didn’t want to go on walks anymore, one of her all time favorite things to do besides riding in the car. She was limping because of the cracked pads.

I took her into the vet again. He diagnosed her as having an auto immune disease. Her body’s immune system was attacking her skin. He told me this was probably a life long affliction now. She would be on medication for the rest of her life. In addition she would probably pant a lot and be very hungry and thirsty.   She would gain so much weight that at some point she would probably have trouble walking.

We are in that phase now. The black skin is almost all gone from her belly. However she gets black spots under her fur that eventually peel off and all the hair that was on the spot peels off with it. My dog has spots where there is no hair.

She is always hungry and although I try to keep her on somewhat of a diet, she went from 18 lbs to almost 27 lbs. She is so tired with the extra weight, all she wants to do is sleep. She can’t get comfortable and changes positions many times a night.

I started researching these flea medicine and sure enough, this happens a lot. There are Facebook groups that talk about this. Sometimes the dogs die in days. Sometimes they are crippled for life. These are great big companies that you could never win a lawsuit against because only a small percentage of their customers have this complaint. Since this isn’t damaging humans, there is very little government oversight.

The guilt of this is killing me. I think my lack of investigation has led to me killing my dog.

There are different holistic approaches to fleas that I could have done if I had thought to look it up. Some of it is a simple as spreading a flour-like substance around your garden that kills the fleas. Some of it uses essential oils that fleas hate the smell of so they go somewhere else.

Take some time and research holistic veterinary and NEVER, NEVER, NEVER put pesticides on your dog.

Dog Gone Dog