Allen:

Well great. Well thank you again Dr. Dresser. We’re so glad to have you and to really get some of your insights and share it with our community.  And it’s wonderful to have such an expert on the line.

   Dr. Dresser:

Thank you.

             Allen:

Why don’t start by some... going into some general health questions about how folks can keep their Pug healthy? So let’s begin the discussion today. And we’d love for you to offer general health tips and advice on how folks out there can help keep their Pugs healthy and happy.

And I know that as we start to head into the spring as we record this conversation, maybe one of the things that you might want to touch on in the beginning is how folks can prevent their Pugs from getting fleas and ticks.

   Dr. Dresser:

Okay. You kind of have to look at the area of the country you’re living in. Some places it’s not as big an issue as others. We’ve been very successful using Frontline, which is a topical flea prevention; and also Revolution. Either of those products are nice and again, you’d base it on what the prevalence is your part of the country.

One very new study that Ohio State has just come out with, and they were so surprised by their results that they went ahead and repeated it several times, and that is in years past we’ve always said if you have fleas you need to bomb your house and spray your house and do all this business.

But they discovered at Ohio State that if you vacuum that 95% of the fleas are killed. And their eggs are killed as well or damaged just being sucked up and beat around by the vacuum cleaner. So indeed all you need to do if you do have an infestation is treat your pets and then vacuum extremely thoroughly. And that should take care of things.

             Allen:

Oh that’s a great tip. I did not know that. And having had fleas in the house through our Pugs before we’ve gone kind of the flea bomb route. So that’s a great tip to know that you don’t need that really.

And we’ve experienced great luck with Frontline ourselves here in the Northeast. So thank you for that.

   Dr. Dresser:

Sure.