Summer, Fleas and Festool

I don’t know how it is with other regions of our country, but I would assume that fleas are a real challenge to pet owners.  Here in the deep South, fleas are omnipresent in the warm months.  We have kept them at bay by numerous ways, but some work better than others, and some are very expensive to maintain.

The usual is to use the chemical back of the neck products, but with 5 dogs and 9 cats, that can get expensive every month.  So we have adopted some new and different methods and so far, we are flea free….at least in the house and it seems that it’s working on the animals.

1) We give them bi-weekly flea baths with puppy flea shampoo.  Just fill up the very large wheel barrel with water and soap away.  Works,,  but it’s best you do that bi- weekly, and since it’s puppy, it’s not overly chemical.

2) Diet:  We have basically gone to a raw diet…with suppliments of foods and vitamins.  Raw chopped up chicken is excellent ….the bones are what they would be eating in the raw….(not cooked, either) and their teeth look good.  We do suppliment with scrapes from the table, because , well, raw chicken seems a bit bland.  We also have big containers of brewer’s yeast and leicthen.  They seem to be thriving.

The brewer’s yeast (and also garlic cloves weekly) change the ‘smell’ of the blood and fleas and ticks don’t bite.  Well, they probably bite but they don’t like the taste.

3.) Right before Christmas last year, we bought a Festool vacuum along with the very expensive saw, etc….something that my carpenter  husband (he’s actually more than a carpenter) thought would be used only when he cut wood….. built something. (I Bless the man who told us about Festool…he may be wanting in many ways but he did introduce us to the Festool system.  Thank you, M.)

However, my husband was WRONG!!!  I have commandeered that CT22 Vacuum, a product and delight of German technology  and I use it every day.  It has a marvelous ‘suck’, many good attachments for cleaning the house, and it has made our lives so much easier…and the house cleaner…especially while we are in this state of renovation.  Which we are.  Plaster dust, the bane of any restoration project (and we have a whole house restoration going on right now….the only positive of my husband’s furlough days…..and we are finally getting done the things that need to be done in this 1880’s house.

The other day the hose coupling fell off from the attachment I was using and I thought I had broken it.  I glued and taped it back and it was fine…but my smarter son took it apart and showed me that the GERMAN part of this was that it screwed in the opposite way of our American way.  Reverse.  Counterclockwise.  There was no reason for tape or glue.  Blessed Germans….

This whole Festool was a very expensive venture, and I thought for a while that it was just…..stupid.  Until I found ANOTHER use for the vacuum.

Dogs.  And Fleas.

It works great!  The dogs were at first suspicious of the noise, but the suck (using the little attachment for  upholstery) is like a deep massage and the dogs all like it.  And these dogs are so funny.

Gally, (Galahad) was found three years ago on the side of the road, a three month puppy almost dead of starvation and heat stroke (92 degrees)  And the kick here is he was found at the end of the driveway of his bastard owners.  Later their house burned down.  Good.  They deserved it.  If this sounds harsh they were lowlife drug dealers.  Gally is a Shiloh Shepherd, about 90 lbs now.  For a month he couldn’t walk because he was so weak.  He was pink because he had no hair.  Extreme mange.  He only wanted to lie under a shade in the grass for a while.  Now?  He’s huge, bouncy, the most intelligent dog we have ever had, and part of our family.

Charlie is 15, a Husky neighbors found on their lawn at 5 months….abandoned we thought, (he wasn’t but we refused to give him back after we spent $$$ on the medical bills) and 15 is old for a Husky, especially in the South.  Beautiful dog, and going strong still.

Two spaniels….one found running down a busy street with an auto chain around his neck and brought to us by another rescuer….he’s doing great, recovering from an ear mite infection.  Check for ear mites…easy to control only if you get to it fast.

One spaniel is Sparky, an English Field Spaniel….when he came to us, he bit everyone, except me.  I was momma….but no one was safe from him.  Scared and abused terribly. Won’t go into details, but it was horrific.  This dog is my personal favorite  and one  day, after about 3 months, decided to  ‘trust’.   He became the  greeter of our house.  Everyone loves Sparky, who climbs up on the couch to lick the unwary.

Merlin!  A red Golden Retriever who was thrown out of a car window into the parking lot of our vet.  It was right before Xmas and no puppy, no animal should spend the holidays in a cage.  Or life.  So Merlin came home with us, and he is a big mook with a ton of personal toys.

They all now love  the Festool vacuum running up and down their bodies, and if you do it a couple of times a week…..
NO FLEAS!!! A chemical -free solution to these pests.

The cats are next, but we have to get heavy welding gloves for this trial.

Lady Nyo

Tags: dogs, Festool, Fleas, Non chemical solutions, suppliments, the South