Advantage

Just wondering how safe Advantage is. My cat is able to reach the back of her neck and scratch where I placed the one and only treatment I purchased. It almost killed her because she licked the foot she used to scratch with so have been extremely reluctant to purchase any other liquid product since then. What I want to know is just how safe Advantage is if my cat scratches and licks the treatment off the back of her neck

Great bit of kit!

My dog is a Cairn Terrier (Furgus) all my friends call him Toto. They also say he looks more like a Wombat than a dog. I rescued him from a pound in Brisbane, he was on death row so my daughter rescued him and I had her send him up to me in Mareeba Nth Qld. Love him. Wonderful dog.Vicki rivett

12 years ago my cross maltese was a lost dog she was very dirty and nobody claimed her so I gave her a wash and I prickt my self she had a wire around het neck growing in her skin also she must had a litter of puppies she had milk I toke her to the vet he said she was very badly treated I had her disexs she is a beautiful and lovely dog but she always scratch herself and bite herself she got no fleas or mite, my old poodle 12 years old had his teeths remove he still got a couple and one eye tooth he is a bit lopsided but healthy again only his eyes are getting blue, my cat is very big nine pound not fat but big I put the advantage high in his neck and under his hair so he can,t lick it .corrieleeuwerik

Our two swiss white shepherds were plagued by fleas last summer, and the well known treatment recommended by our vet wasnt working. Our son suggested we try Advantage, and within a day no more fleas, and happy dogs! We also had no fleas in the house or garden within a few days.
We are very happy and so are our dogs

I have an 8 year old Staffie, and although I have used other products on her Advantage is the only one that works. Since Staffies are prone to skin disorders we also feed her a tablespoon of peanut paste daily. Our vet approves of thes regime. Thanks to Advantage I have a happy flea free hairy kid. Just love my Bridee and would hate to see her suffering with skin disorders.

I live on the NSW/Qld coast and am using Advantage on my 12 year old Foxie. I have found that the fleas are still prevalent on my pet although the house has been treated as well. Any advice

hi,i have a 5 year old shar pei and a lab x ridgeback who 7 years old..in the beginnng i tryed so many other flea stuff for them as nothing was working…untill i tryed advantage..wow it worked..no more fleas..and no more skin problems..thank god for advantage,for making my dogs more comfortable in life.

Dear Helga,
Thank you for your post.
Advantage should be applied at the base of the skull, this will prevent accidental ingestion of the product. If however your cat or dog manages to lick the product the risk of an adverse event is extremely low as Advantage has a very high safety margin and will be rapidly broken down by the body. Yet the alcohol carrier in Advantage is bitter tasting and may cause cats or dogs to drool and salivate excessively if ingested.
Kind Regards,
Scout and the team at Dog Diaries

Dear Linda,
Thank you for your post.

To increase your understanding of the product, and fleas in general, please read the information below.

Advantage rapidly kills fleas on your pet, but does not repel them. If fleas were repelled, they would not die and will look for another host – i.e. you and your family. Advantage will stop reinfesting fleas from biting in less than 5 minutes and will kill them within one hour of contact.

10 adult fleas can create 250,000 fleas in one month, so if you are seeing a large number of fleas – this is normal. Unfortunately, the existing fleas need to go through their lifecycle and hatch out. This can take between 6 – 8 weeks. As you are aware, the fleas will jump directly onto your pet. These fleas will be affected by the Advantage within 3 – 5 minutes and will die as fast as 20 minutes. Advantage affects the fleas’ nervous system and the first thing that happens to a flea is that they cannot use their mouth parts to bite. So even though these fleas are on your pet, they are not biting. Once a flea is affected by the product – they will die. A flea will not jump off the pet and then recover.

It will still take a minimum of 6 – 8 weeks to break the lifecycle. Washing in a flea shampoo or any shampoo containing soap, will potentially strip the product out of the pet’s skin and coat. After washing your pet, Advantage can be applied as soon as the coat is 100% dry, which will take a few hours to occur. The washing instructions below are extremely important.

Ensure that your pet does not come into contact with any water for 24 hours after application ie, no swimming or running in the rain. Wait a minimum of 7 days before bathing again after application, as this may remove the product from the coat before it is able to distribute evenly. Ensure that you always use a soap-free shampoo, as a shampoo containing detergent or soap will strip the product from the coat and render it ineffective. Do not wash more frequently than every fortnight.

Flea or tick washes, rinses or shampoos have the same effect as soap-containing shampoos, they are extremely stripping and remove Advantage out of the fatty layer of the pets’ skin. We recommend two excellent soap-free shampoos made by a company called Dermcare-Vet, they are Natural Shampoo and Aloveen, oatmeal and aloe vera shampoo.

Less than 5% of fleas in a population will be found on pets at any one time. The other 95% are found in the environment as eggs, larvae or pupae. When this lifecycle has completed, the juvenile fleas will hatch out from the pupae and jump on to your pet. Advantage will rapidly break down the lifecycle by killing fleas before they can lay eggs and killing the larvae in the pet’s surroundings. However, the pupal stage in the environment is resistant to every chemical known to man, and no product is able to penetrate these cocoon stages. Therefore patience is required as all the immature stages hatch out, jump onto your pet and are killed by Advantage. Until all the pupal stages have hatched, you will continue to see fleas.

Advantage will affect a flea’s nervous system and you can tell it is working if the fleas are slow and don’t jump away immediately. Healthy, unaffected fleas are very difficult to catch and are almost impossible to remove from you pet’s coat.

There are a number of other issues that need to be addressed….

1. Are all the pets in your household treated with Advantage?
In order to break down the flea lifecycle all pets in the environment need to be treated. An untreated pet will bring fleas into the environment, which will breed, lay eggs and therefore hatch more fleas. With this in mind, if your pet goes outside your home environment they have the potential to pick up fleas as they are going into an environment you cannot control.

2. Are you using the correct size for your pets weight?
Small Dogs = 0 – 4kg Medium Dogs = 4kg – 10kg Large Dogs = 10kg – 25kg X-Large Dogs = 25kg – 50kg
Small Cats = 0 – 4kg Large Cats = 4kg – 8kg

3. Are you applying it correctly?
The entire tube needs to be applied directly to the skin when you part your pets fur. The X-Large dog treatment needs to be applied in three separate spots – between the shoulder blades, at the base of the tail and one spot in between as per the label directions. Smaller treatments only need application in the one spot between the shoulder blades.

4. Use Advantage all year round.
It is recommended that you treat your pet with Advantage every month. If you have a break (for example over winter) this will enable the parts of the flea lifecycle that you cannot see (eggs, larvae and pupae) to build up. When summer arrives, there will be a big infestation of fleas into your environment.

Remember to have a look at the fleas on your pet – if they are slow this means the Advantage is working. You can also do “the white sheet test”. If your pet has fleas on it at bed time, put a white sheet over its bedding. In the morning, check the white sheet for any dead fleas.

We would really like to help you solve your flea problem.

Again, Advantage does not repel fleas from jumping onto your pet, but once they are on the animal they are rapidly killed. The entire flea lifecycle is broken, the fleas are unable to breed and therefore the product treats fleas on your pet as well as prevents the lifecycle from continuing.

However it is very important to understand that if your pet goes outside – even briefly, where neighboring dogs, cats, wild rodents and possums may frequent the area, there will be a constant source of fleas in the environment from neighboring animals shedding flea eggs. Unless your animal is placed in quarantine away from all environmental contaminants, it is impossible to achieve the ideal situation of a flea-free environment. This situation does not exist. If you have just begun Advantage treatment and you are not seeing an immediate response, this is normal. The entire flea lifecycle takes a minimum of 6-8 weeks, therefore an excellent degree of control over fleas will take a minimum of 6-8 weeks. You have to be patient unfortunately, and the situation will probably get worse before it gets better, with temperature and humidity increasing as we approach summer, with many thousands of immature fleas hatching out every day.

We request that you please be patient as you will see the results over time.

Kind Regards,
Scout and the team at Dog Diaries

Hi … I have a similar problem to Linda.
I searched the website for information about what I should & should not do when I applied Advantage, but nowhere did I find the information about no water within 24hrs, or any of the other information stated here. I therefore assumed that this information was only pertinent to Frontline. I’m disappointed that this information wasn’t clear on your site, or was it just difficult to find? I thought I’d read through all the information about Product Info on the product website.

I didn’t get my dog wet in the 24hrs as I’d had him bathed only 72hrs before applying it, nor did I use any shampoo but within 2 weeks of applying it, there were fleas on my dog. I found Advantage worked very well, the first couple of times … however it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference now. My dog has fleas again, although I had the whole house & yard sprayed/treated at the same time although there were no animals in the property prior to my moving here.
Because there are ground fleas in Hervey Bay, I don’t take him out of the yard, as I see no point in having my whole place treated, only to introduce fleas from outside. There is a kitten next door, but it doesn’t come into our yard.
I am used to applying flea treatments over the last 5 years since moving to Qld.
I’d be interested to hear your comments as I really only want one pet, not a Cav & a flea circus.
Thanks
a slightly frustrated …
Wendy & Cully ….

Dear Wendy,

Thank you for your post.

The washing instructions are as follows:

Ensure that your dog does not come into contact with any water for 24 hours after Advantage application ie, no swimming or running in the rain. Wait a minimum of 7 days before bathing the dog after application, as this may remove the product from the coat before it is able to distribute evenly. Ensure that you always use a soap-free shampoo, as a shampoo containing detergent or soap will strip the product from the coat and render it ineffective. Do not wash more frequently than every fortnight. Flea or tick washes, rinses or shampoos have the same effect as soap-containing shampoos, they are extremely stripping and remove Advantage out of the fatty layer of the dogs’ skin. We recommend two excellent soap-free shampoos made by a company called Dermcare-Vet, they are Natural Shampoo and Aloveen, oatmeal and aloe vera shampoo.

Just letting you know that new washing instructions are currently being complied and should appear on the label in the near future.

Kind Regards,
Scout and the team at Dog Diaries