Meet Pearl, Pebbles, and Oscar. The most crazy and lovable dogs of them all. Why am I writing about them you ask. Well, they have been keeping me busy and paranoid for the past two weeks.....with FLEAS.
Let me start out with a little Dawson history. When we moved to Texas in 2007 I didn't have a thought in the world about fleas. Never seen one or dealt with them in any way. Needless to say when we saw an abandoned puppy at the dog park covered with fleas I didn't think twice about bringing it home. The poor thing had hundreds of fleas. So many that they were crawling in and out of it's poor eyes. I gave the puppy a flea bath, but it did little to help the poor thing. The next morning, when the shelter opened I took the puppy and thought that would be the end of that. That is how we learned the hard way about fleas. Our precious dogs (only Pearl and Pebbles then) spent the rest of the summer with fleas. We did everything we could to get rid of them but to no avail. Every day I would spend time picking off the fleas. We were all miserable. I'm not saying that I wouldn't rescue an abandoned puppy again...I would just be a whole lot careful about doing it.
That summer was the last we saw of fleas...until now.
A couple of weeks ago I found a possible flea on Oscar. I talked myself out of it...saying to myself "the dogs haven't been anywhere where they could have gotten fleas." The next day I found one on Pebbles. Eek! So Eric and I do "the check." This entails flipping the dogs over and checking their bellies and armpits...flea havens. Sure enough they all had little fleas. Eric and I look at each other with sheer panic. How did this happen??? Where did they get them from??? We haven't taken them to the dog park or any park for that matter. We've just been doing our neighborhood strolls.
And so the nightmare begins. With the warm winter I knew the bugs would be bad this summer, but fleas?!?! We armed ourselves for battle with yard spray, house spray, flea shampoo, and flea drops. I knew it would be my duty as the home executive to take care of this. Early in the morning I began. I had a plan of action, I would spray everything and then finish with bathing the dogs. I washed everything I could in hot water. Anything that couldn't fit in the washing machine was sprayed. I apologized to all the butterflies and ladybugs as I sprayed the yard. I was a woman with a mission. When it was time to wash the dogs, I knew this would be my biggest challenge. The flea shampoo instructions said you have to leave the soap on for 5 minutes. I have 3 dogs who HATE baths. Somehow I managed to get all 3 into the tub and wrestle them to stay in for the five minutes.
I left the day feeling triumphant. Laying down in my newly cleaned and sprayed bed, the thoughts of 2007 continued to nag me. We couldn't get rid of them last time...could we do it this time? Every day since then I do a daily check of the dogs. I continue washing and spraying. Eric is convinced the fleas are attacking him now...although we yet to see another one. We hope every day that the fleas are gone for the summer and that we can have a house of peace and non-itchiness.
Jill
