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I had a client insist that her dogs couldn't get fleas because she lived in a gated community.

Treating fleas

Fleas never really stop being an issue in vet med, but as we in the northern hemisphere are rapidly entering summer, it is once more kicking up in intensity.

In a perfect world, everyone should have their pets on prevention year-round and we'd never have to deal with them, but that's not an achievable outcome.

If your pet does have fleas, you need to treat all pets in the household with effective prevention for at least 3 months while managing the environment. Let me break that down a little further:

"all pets in the household" means every non-human mammal in the house. I don't care if you're only seeing fleas on your one dog - other dogs, cats, ferrets, bunnies, guinea pigs, etc all need to be treated too. All of them.

"effective prevention" unfortunately at least in the US probably means prescription medication, which means your pets have to have a current (generally within last 12 mo) exam on file with a veterinarian. Frontline and other fipronil- or pyrethrin/oid-based products available OTC have become largely ineffective in the last decade or so. I know it's more expensive to get prescription prevention. But I promise it's more expensive in the long run to spend money on products that don't work well and then still have to buy the good stuff afterwards.

"at least 3 months" is because of the flea life cycle and how prevention works. The stuff you give your pets kills the adult fleas when they bite, so they disappear and stop making more fleas. Flea eggs will continue to hatch for a couple months after that. If you treat for less than 3 months you will have the same fleas again. If you stop treating after 3 months you can get fleas again (just like you got them in the first place) but are not guaranteed to.

"managing the environment" means doing what you can to minimize the number of flea eggs that are around. This helps keep your pets comfortable (less itchy) and healthy (reduced risk of illness from fleas). Mostly I have people focus on good household hygiene like vacuuming and washing bedding frequently. If you do use a flea "bomb" product, read the packaging carefully first - most of these are toxic to pets and so have to keep pets out during and for a period of time following treatment.

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me as a kid reading Dune: I appreciate the detailed world-building that justifies why everyone fights with swords and has mental powers, but the idea of a Butlerian Jihad against computers is pretty silly

me in 2025, trying desperately to find the three (3) places you need to go to to disable the latest helpful AI assistant that's inserted itself into my work chat and is advising me to do things that would be a breach of federal law: Oh Now I Get It

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-siiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh-

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Spring is here & I was delighted to see all the spiders in my garden yesterday while digging through the winter overgrowth! My neighbor was less delighted & tried to recommend their lawn service... I don't think they were ready for my thesis on local pollinators, but my reputation as the neighborhood eccentric artist is intact

That poor pest control guy did not know what he was getting into, but given the state of my yard i feel like he should have known what he was getting into.

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I’d like to live through a week that’s not a whole new verse of “We Didn’t Start the Fire.”

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So much ado.

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When I had to replace my fridge the guy at the store did his best to upsell me on 3 different options with AI. I had to explain that I genuinely wanted the stupidest fridge possible.

I’m starting to sound like a nutcase at work because upper management keeps trying to implement AI programs and AI assistants and Chat GPT and my middle-of-the-road, don’t-infodump, don’t-engage response has been “I don’t like AI”, “I prefer to remain in control of my own tasks”, “I’d rather make my own mistakes”, and “I don’t trust any machine smarter than a toaster”

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kissing you on the forehead

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A brief thought in passing.

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Just gonna leave this here

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I think this is just a trend everywhere but I've been very frustrated this week by how much admin work is being outsourced to me as the patient/customer.

My orthodontist tells me I can make an appointment with the surgeon. I call the surgeon. They tell me I need a new referral. I call the orthodontist. They do a referral. I call the surgeon. Referral didn't come through. They tell me about their special unique system we have to use. I call the ortho again and walk them through the referral. I call the surgeon. They say the referral was missing some details so they have to do it again. I call the ortho.

The insurance company calls me about repair shops. I give them the name of the repair shop which I already gave them yesterday. They say they're not in their system but I can use them, but I have to call the repair shop to ask them to contact the insurance company. I call the repair shop and they say the insurance company is supposed to email them.

I feel like at a certain point these constant fetch quests become unreasonable?? Is it too much to expect these groups to communicate with each other instead of making me run back and forth between them???

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Shared here today by Matthew Boroson on Facebook.

Tanith Lee was the first woman to win the British Fantasy Award for best novel, for the second book of the Flat Earth series. She died in 2015. You can buy Tales From the Flat Earth here in paperback or here on Kindle.