A FEW WORDS OF ADVISE

A FEW WORDS OF ADVISE

I am once again confronted by people who do not know how to treat their animals for parasites.

I have a lot of animals, grew up on a farm with lots of animals such as horses, cows, dogs, chickens  and ducks. The result of this is I have veterinarians in the family but I do most of my treatments personally rather than visiting a vet because that is what I have always done for over 50 years.

Like heartworm prevention, I buy 1,000 doses at a time  as you can see in the bottle above and at 50 bucks for a 500 ml, that calculates at 5 cents per dose. Meaning it costs me 60 cents a year per dog if I treat my dog with 1/2 cc of Ivermec per month which is recommended by the manufacturer.

And how much does your office visits and meds cost you per year per dog to prevent heartworms?

The point I want to make here is: What do you do when you can't afford to go to the vet? 

Let your dog go without treatment? Or MY ADVISE: learn how to do it yourself 

AND SAVE MONEY AT THE SAME TIME!

Below is a tube of Panacur, active ingredient; fenbendazole, and this is used to treat intestinal worms,

NOT heartworms.

Fenbendazole is the same ingredient in Safeguard(below) and both brands are owned by a corporation called Merck Animal Health. A 25 gram tube(above) is $14 at the General Vet Supply store about 2 miles from my house. Below you can see a 290 gram tube I use to refill the 25 gram one and that 290 gram purchase runs me about 50 bucks meaning I get about 4 times a much for the same money when I buy in bulk and refill.  

My advise here is learn to do your own vet worm treatments at home and don't miss a treatment just because you ain't got the money OR TIME to go to the vet!


OK, here is another thing people waste a lot of money attempting to control: fleas!

And I have a very effective, non-toxic, economical remedy. As you can see in the photo below, Dr. Bronners Castille Soap, one with eucalyptus, and the other with tea tree oil. Both are effective at repelling fleas, ticks, mange and ear mites that I am amazed it took me so long to try this on the dogs.

And the best part about this is in the wintertime when I do not like to get my dogs wet for bathing I can spray them with a 15-1 dilution of this soap with water and just spray a lite mist upon the top of the dog, and no fleas, AND also they always look clean and have a shiney coat.

Now I am offering this word of advise because I have always had people who do not worm their dogs unless they go to the vet, and along the way, they "get behind schedule on the worming"
and the dog goes down. Well one such couple came from Grand Junction, Colorado and bought 4 puppies to be cow dogs on their ranch. Well about a month after they got back they called me and told me their dogs had hook worms and I asked if they were worming them. They replied no because they don't worm as much in Colorado as we do in Louisiana. I said yes but you came to south Louisiana where I told you we have a lot of parasites in the environment and to worm these babies once a week with Panacur. Being a working cowboy, he was familiar with Panacur. I thought we had an understanding about worming these babies every week?

Well apparently there is a lot more worms in the environment here than at 5,000 foot elevation in the Colorado Rockies, and my cowboy friend acted like he had bought the puppies there, not in Cajun Country.

The result these puppies almost died from parasite infestation.

Last week a couple moved to south Louisiana from California and went to the vet for a rabies vaccination and the vet asked about worming. They didn't want to worm the dog because there were no worms in the environment in California where they came from like here in south Louisiana. The vet being undaunted in his conclusions offered a FREE examination to PROVE  the dog needed worming and came back and said you are right, you dog does NOT have worms! He was surprised because based upon his veterinarian practice, dogs ALWAYS have worms here in Cajun country, and he can then charge you for something he knew BEFORE he tested, and then there is the treatment and the meds, and the follow up visit, etc, etc,etc. All this based upon your being ignorant of how to worm you puppies or dogs at home.

The point I am trying to make here is that just because the cowboy doesn't worm his dogs every month like we do in Louisiana doesnt mean he should NOT follow my advise and worm the puppies EVERY WEEK for the first couple of months. Why? Because he BOUGHT them here and brought them to Colorado, and they had worms when they got there. It is unavoidable to have/OR BUY a dog in Louisiana and it not have worms! Treat them at home, and treat them often!

In my opinion going to the vet every two weeks for worming is expensive and a lot can go wrong if you do not PROPERLY worm according to your climate and local environment.