If my dog is diagnosed with fleas and ticks, what is the treatment to get rid of them?

We have great oral medications that we recommend. One of them that I like the best would be Simparica or Simparica Trio, which is incredibly helpful if you want to incorporate heartworm medication. And those usually do a very effective job of getting rid of fleas and ticks.

The best thing to do, right Coconut, is to get them on prevention. And so we want to keep them on prevention year-round down here because the weather gets warm in the winter, so we don't see anything die off per se. And so we can make some recommendations based on the needs of your pet. But my favorite products that we have here in the clinic are going to be Simparica Trio or regular Simparica or Bravecto.

If your dog has fleas or ticks, the most important thing to do is to get a recommendation from your veterinarian regarding which product would be good for them. Nowadays, oral flea and tick preventions, which are prescription-level products, are used. The reason for this is that they are so effective at killing fleas and ticks as well as preventing them. There's a lot of online information that talks about how dangerous these products are. That is not the case. They have to be FDA-approved to be prescribed and used, which means they have to go through rigorous testing. With many of these products, there are risks involved, making your decision of which product to use all the more important. It needs to be a decision that you and your veterinarian make together.

We typically use oral flea and tick products in dogs. With all the thousands of doses we do yearly, we rarely see any problems. These products have very low risks and extremely high effectiveness. Unless your dog has an underlying issue, we recommend these products. Fortunately, there are other quality products to consider as well.