Natural Flea And Tick Treatments For Dogs

Let me help you to choose the right natural flea and tick treatment for your dog.

We’re on lockdown while I’m writing this blog but we’re still allowed to walk our dogs. I hope that you agree with me that it’s the best therapy and hopefully, with warmer months coming, we’ll spend even more time outdoors. It’s all lovely until the insects and ticks starting joining us though. They don’t respect social isolation at all, do they?

Essential Oils – Natural Insect Repellents

If you’re like me and don’t want to expose your dog, yourself, and the environment to more unnecessary chemicals, you reach for essential oils. They not only smell nice but are also effective against insects, fleas, and ticks.

When we use natural flea and tick treatments on our dogs, they need to be reapplied more often but why? The active ingredients in essential oils tend to be highly volatile so they may only be effective for shorter periods of time. Frequent reapplication is often necessary.

Insect Repelling Citrus Spray.

That’s what I experienced in India with Insect Repelling Citrus Spray. I sprayed myself just before we left our hut but took the bottle with me and then sprayed myself a few times during the evening. I even sprayed the table cover in the restaurant to keep the mosquitos away and to be honest, I didn’t mind as it smells nice like a citrusy perfume or air freshener.

Ticks and Fleas.

When it comes to protecting our dogs it’s mainly fleas and ticks that we worry about.

Both fleas and ticks have different strategies on how to land on their host. As soon as a young flea hatches she looks for a host. Fleas notice vibration and body heat and as soon as the potential host approaches they’ll jump straight on, bite, and then feed on the blood whilst being hidden in warm fur.
 
Ticks don’t jump like fleas they have a different approach. They wait patiently in the grass or bushes or other vegetation and when their target approaches they just drop themselves on. They’ll then suck on the blood for weeks until we find them, or if not, once they’re full, they’ll just let go and then lay their eggs in a nearby suitable area.

100% Natural Flea Repellent

Insect Repelling Citrus Spray is 100% natural and has a refreshing, bright, and fresh aroma. The high-quality essential oils used in this spray are intolerable to fleas, mosquitos, horse flies, wasps, and even ants. It’s suitable not only for dogs but also for large animals and humans.

🍃 Lemon essential oil is one of the best essential oils for fleas. Its strong smell and powerful active ingredients can repel not only fleas but also flies, midges, mosquitos, and ants.

🍃 Grapefruit essential oil smells delightful and repels insects, particularly fleas.

🍃 The bright and sunny, spirit-lifting aroma of sweet orange essential oil is not pleasant to insects at all.

Tick Off

Vita Canis Tick Off contains high-quality essential oils and hydrosols which naturally repel ticks. This 100% natural, vegan and cruelty-free formula is safe for dogs, horses, and other large animals as well as humans but intolerable to ticks, fleas, and harvest mites. Tick Off also contains non-synthetic chemicals and fragrances.

Ticks and Essential Oils

Ticks operate mainly by using their sense of smell. They don’t jump or fall from trees, instead, they do something called “questing.” That is, they climb to the top of a blade of grass or plant and stick their front legs up in the air waiting for the scent of a victim walking by. If you find one on your head then it crawled there (ticks don’t jump). Their front pair of legs have what are called Haller’s organs, which detect the smell, temperature, movement, and carbon dioxide and this is how they know you’re coming. They love warmth and moisture and are just waiting for a warm, moist environment to call “home”, such as your dog or you.

The great discovery is that, for some reason, they aren’t attracted to the scent of some essential oils. The smell of certain essential oils is so disgusting to ticks that they would rather go hungry than come any closer to your dog, your horse, or yourself! These include geranium, grapefruit, cedarwood, rosewood, and lemongrass all of which are in Vita Canis Tick Off, of course, 🙂. For example, the cedarwood oil kills ticks in 6 different ways: death by dehydration, neutralization of bodily fluids, encapsulation and/or emulsification of bodily fats, prevention of breathing, pheromonal interference that interrupts processes necessary to metabolism, movement, reproduction and feeding, and dissolving insect larvae.

The active ingredients found in lemongrass essential oil are also very unpleasant for fleas. It won’t kill fleas but it can convince them to leave a pet host and stay away from your house.

How do you choose between Tick Off and Insect Repelling Citrus Spray?

I use Tick Off when walking my dogs in the woods, fields, and parks and during the high season, I spray myself as well. The midges are bothering me already on our daily walks but not so much my dogs. I then use Insect repelling spray to spray my hair and coat to repel them. I spray my dogs with Insect repelling spray if we go socialising with other dogs, which is very rare to be honest, apart from the pups.

Which one of the natural flea and tick repelling treatments have you tried?

Jitka xx

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