Once Bitten... take a bath!

Oh, poor, poor Beryl. She was lying on the front porch and I bent down to pet her and a bunch of fleas jumped off of her and onto me.

She just got a bath last week and now was so infested that she was getting dehydrated. I flea-combed her as much as I could on the porch, then took her inside. She promptly hid under a table because she KNEW what was about to happen.

Sure enough - Mommy gave her a bath. A nice long one with lots of flea soap to soak into her short but incredibly thick fur. Handfuls of hair were falling off her. She had several raw places, but I don't know if they're from scratching or just from flea allergy. Our old Nikki dog had the same problems before she died. She was just so old that the fleas sensed vulnerability and hopped on. Nothing helped.

So, I washed and washed (even her ears and her face) and rinsed and rinsed so that no soap would be left to irritate her skin. She was almost a different dog when I finally let her out of the bathroom. She was perkier and nobody was biting her.

She's much cleaner, flea-free (for the moment), and ready for a nap in this picture.

On my way to work, I stopped and got some FrontlinePlus for her and for the cats. It's the latest version. God, I hope it works.

I had an ex-boyfriend who's cat died of flea-bite-anemia. He was extremely dehydrated and I had to give him bags of IV fluids twice a day. Old BF was out of town and I begged him over the phone to consent to put the cat to sleep because he was so miserable and all he did was lie there struggling to breathe. Once I finally convinced him that it was the humane thing to do, I put the cat in my car and drove him to the vet's office. He died about halfway there. It was a horrible way to go. If I could have spared him that I would have (but he wasn't my cat to decide about...) and if I can keep another animal from dying that way, I will.

Pray that the FrontlinePlus works....