EPA cautions about Frontline

The EPA has come out with a new set of guidelines regarding labelling for Frontline, Advantage, and other anti-flea and tick “medications” for dogs and cats–particularly for smaller pets, 10-20 lbs.  The Daily Green has a pretty good article about it.

Just to be clear, for those who don’t know–these aren’t medications per se, they involves treating your pet with a small amount of pesticide through its bloodstream, believed (by some, many, what-have you) to be a small enough amount to cause no harm to the animal but enough to kill any fleas, ticks, or eggs hanging out in there.  They don’t “prevent” fleas or ticks from getting onto your animal, they just ensure that they won’t be able to live there long enough to reproduce.

I did a fairly lengthy post on this topic last summer, after a friend of mine got her puppy (which animal is now by the way fully grown, sweet as can be, and better trained than any of my dogs past or present could ever hope to be. This is one sweet fuzzball.)–so check it out if you are interested.  In it I outline a lot of potentially useful natural insect deterrents, though in the interest of disclosure I live in a part of the world where every winter for 3 months everything is pretty much frozen solid and there just aren’t any fleas or anything else living, for that matter.  Still, for me these methods have worked, and in 17 years of having dogs as roomates I’ve only had two flea breakouts, both eradicated fairly quickly and without using toxic chemicals. (Okay, the first one wasn’t eradicated quickly because I didn’t know what I was doing.  Once I did it right, it was over.)

So if you’re interested–check that post out; and I’d love it if anyone left any comments or thoughts about things I missed.

So…pet people…what do you do? How do you keep the creepycrawlies off your animals?