Expensive flea treatment for pets ?

[WendyS]

If your pet has fleas you used to be able to visit your vet to buy medication to put in its food once a month to keep it flea-free.

I've read that the rules have changed. Apparently such medication cannot now be sold without prescription. So, as many less affluent people have pets, they will now have to book an appointment twice a year, (the animal must have been seen within six months to get the flea repellent.) This will probably mean a vet's fee of between �20 to �30 a time, for a perfectly healthy animal, just so they can receive a flea repellent prescription. This will increase the cost of owning a pet by �40 to �60 a year.
Animal owners be warned, especially when the warm weather arrives.

[Eels]

The best flea treatments are the strongest ones. These are only available on precription from a vet, and always have been. Strictly speaking, for these drugs your vet should have stipulated that your pet was seen every 6 months anyway. But these tightened regulations mean that vets are having to be more rigorous to cover their own backs.

Not all practices will charge a full fee - some will just charge a small check-up fee. Some practices will wish to see your pet more frequently than every 6 months. All these regulations are in place so as to protect the pets. Although generally extremely safe and very effective, these strong prescription drugs can have side effects if the pet is not in good health, so there is a definite value to having your pets re-examined regularly. Vets (believe it or not) don't like these regulations any more than you do - it causes all sorts of paperwork headaches, but it isn't their choice.

[lankeela]

Provided you are registered with a vet, most will allow you to purchase the prescription only flea treatment from their receptionists (which of course makes a mockery of them being prescription only!). You can also get a prescription from your vet and get the medication from one of the online veterinary companies such as vetmedicpharmacy or caninechemist.

[jakep]

For flea and worm treatment, the pet only has to be seen every 12 months, this is usually covered by the annual vaccination visit. For all other POM the pet needs to be seen every 6 months. The practice I work at only charges for the cost of the meds, no consult fee

[happy_face]

I've never had that problem as buy Frontline for my dog. He gets it every other month and it keeps him flea and tick free. There are 6 applications in a pack so it'll last a year. When the year is up he's due for his yearly dog vaccination so I take him to the vet for that and then get another lot of Frontline.

I once had a situation with another dog who got fleas and it ended up being very costly as the poor ****** was allergic to them as well. So we ended up having to get anti-inflammatories, Frontline and spray for the whole house. Prevention is definitely better than cure.