How to Get Rid of Fleas in Your Home for Good!

If you own a cat or dog, you may have encountered a problem with some pesky little critters, more commonly known as fleas, in your household at some point. As embarrassing as this problem may be, there is a way to rid your house and pet of these nasty creatures once and for all! There are a couple of things that most pet stores will not tell you, as they want you to be forced to keep returning to buy more and more flea products, thereby filling their pockets and leaving you stuck with a flea infestation! Take my advice and you will exterminate the fleas from your home once and for all.

Much of the anti-flea products that you can buy in Petsmart are not worth your money and are frankly a waste of time. An example of these products includes the foggers and the upholstery spray. I can say this with confidence as my husband and I have purchased and used these products on two separate occasions...both times leading to no success in ridding our house of fleas. Not to mention, these products are usually not good for the environment and probably not good for children or pets to be inhaling or touching either. Do yourself a favor and just skip buying these products...they didn't work for us and they won't work for you!

The first thing you're going to want to buy is Boric Acid. Ironically, our Petsmart didn't even sell this product in their store, so we had to go to a local feed store (farm supply) in order to purchase this product. I believe it was about $45.00 for a canister, which seems expensive but when you think about it...you're actually going to spend less in the long run. If you purchase a $45.00 product that eliminates your pest problem as opposed to multiple trips to the pet store purchasing multiple products, this is definitely saving money. As soon as we spread the boric acid over our carpets, under our furniture, and on our furniture...the flea problem disappeared. Okay, maybe not within seconds but within days our cat wasn't scratching anymore and we knew the fleas had been killed. The best thing about this product is that it is non-toxic to humans and pets and doesn't leave harmful residues on your furniture or carpets like foggers and chemical sprays do. Boric Acid is an absolute MUST for eradicating a flea problem in the home.

The next product you are going to want to purchase and put down in the same day as the boric acid is an anti-flea yard spray. Our major problem was that we had not treated our yard and we believe that we were actually letting fleas take a hike on us into our home and ultimately jumping onto our cat. Living in Florida, there are many bugs and creepy crawlies here and fleas are no exception to that rule. So purchase a yard spray and spray the areas that you tend to walk through and all around the doors to your home. This prevents any of the fleas outside from hitching a ride inside and getting into your house or on your pet again. A very necessary step in preventing a flea problem from recurring.

Another task that you will want to perform frequently in the week following your treatment of your home, be sure to vacuum the boric acid up the week after putting it down. After the initial vacuuming, my advice is to vacuum once day (yes, I know it's a pain in the butt) for the next week. This will ensure to get up whatever is left over as far as flea debris or even rogue eggs.

The last must-do in eradicating fleas from your home is to ensure that your pet is flea-free or well on his way to becoming flea-free. If the fleas are evident on your pet, you may want to purchase a product called CapStar. It is a pill that can be given to your pet once a day and kills the fleas on your pet within a matter of thirty minutes after ingestion. We used this product on our cat and it seemed to do the trick of killing whatever pests were hiding on him. You can use this product as long as you feel it is necessary, but I believe we used it on our cat for about a week. You'll definitely want to read the directions before administering.

You will also want to do the obvious thing and treat your pet with a flea medication such as Advantage or Revolution. Frontline no longer works for keeping fleas off of your pet. Let me repeat that...Frontline does not work any longer! The reason our cat acquired a flea problem is because we had him on Frontline and he got fleas anyway! Do yourself a favor, throw out the Frontline and buy a different, more effective product. The problem is that fleas tend to evolve, or become immune if you will, to certain types of chemicals and medicines over a period of time. They adapt...it's the survival of the fittest process at its best! Or it's worst...

Be sure to mark on a calendar when you give your pet his monthly treatment, this way you do not have to remember exactly what day you did it last and it won't leave any openings in the treatment window for which fleas to take advantage of. You don't want these bad boys coming back and infesting your home or pet ever again, so do as I say!