Biospot vs. Advantix - Page 3

I've been an avid user of Frontline for my dogs and honestly, has had excellent results. Frontline Plus will still be launched here in the Philippines. Can't wait for the + to come out in the market since it also repels mosquitoes. I've tried Advantix on my adopted Golden Retriever and it seems to be working well. Though I've noticed that after a few days, mosquitoes are hanging out again in the kennel. Revolution has worked well for my friends' dogs.

We have always used Bio Spot....Great Product! Great Price! We have never had any negative reactions to the product either. I have had others tell me that Frontline has NOT worked for their dogs.....after tracking, their dogs were loaded with ticks.

p59teitel: What a brave mom you have, to offer herself as guinea pig! Truly, I wish there was reliable EARLY testing for Lyme and other tick borne diseases, as well as vaccinations we could count on. I know too many people who suffer with this affliction, and personally as a mom, watching a strange rash move across your childs face, at the same time complaining of a sore jaw, just before you're about to give birth to another child, is not a comfortable feeling. They have to take blood samples from a vein to test for Lyme, and the kid was crying! Of course, it was negative, but we hit 'em with the antibiotics anyway, and symptoms disappeared. I know a few people who were not fortunate enough to catch it early, and they have a real hard time with Lyme. Somehow I don't put much faith in the canine vaccination either, because they always test for it anyway, even if you have the animal vaccinated. I think this time of year is the WORST. Again, check your "leaders" for the most ticks, I swear this is true, as I was the leader once, and spent hours washing and combing dozens of the beasties from my hair. And no one else was complaining!

Thanks for the nice thoughts about my mother, beetree. But honesty forces me to disclose that, given her frugal New England Yankee background, getting something for nothing may have been every bit as attractive to her as advancing the cause of science was. :)

::Idly wonders, since deer ticks seem to be the main vector, how the incidence of Lyme disease would be affected by the re-introduction of wolves to the New England States...:: You see, we don't have much of a tick problem in Ontario. As a matter of fact, though I canoe, hike, fish and camp, I have never even SEEN a live tick on me or my dogs. We don't have much of a deer overpopulation problem her in Ontario. Yet our winters are JUST as bad. The difference? We haven't killed all our natural predators off...yet! [Dons bulletproof vest, as the hunting faction and the farmers get ready to shoot her down...]

[quote]Lyme disease is now an epidemic in several US states.4 Estimates are now at 3 million cases of lyme disease in the US in 3 decades. Most of these cases are from states that border Canada yet Canada reports it has only had a few hundred cases...? [/quote] http://www.canlyme.com/bottomkonk22004.html Hmmmm....

The lyme disease problem in SE Mass and Cape Cod does emanate from a large deer overpopulation. In the past decade coyotes have helped keep the deer population somewhat in check by occasionally taking down fawns - but the coyotes here are not organized in large packs, don't really have the size to take down adult deer, and seem to be more interested in hunting smaller game. So their impact is limited. But what really has led to the deer overpopulation here is the lack of areas where humans can hunt. I live at the beginning of a peninsula that has around 8 square miles of land, an estimated 600 deer, and absolutely zero land where hunting is permitted. There are more deer per square mile where I live than there are in either of the large state forests north and west of me where hunting is permitted. Wolves were eradicated from this area before 1700, so they haven't been a factor for a long long time. The conversion over the last century and a half of much of the land from farms back to forest is absolutely a factor. More forest times zero hunters = many more deer.

Another question I've never gotten a good answer to: I know if you just yank a tick off, its mouthparts will stay behind, and possibly cause infection. What is the safe way of removing a tick, once it's attached itself? Yeah, a coyote doesn't have the strength to pull down a deer. They prefer rabbits and domestic pets! I used ot live in Richmond Hill, and as the town expanded, it enroached on the turf of a well-established coyote population. The Ministry of Natural Resources actually had to hold public information sessions on how to co-exist with the pack! (Number One was keep your pets in after dark!)

I'm able to pull a tick and get the whole tick. What I do is pinch up the dog's skin around the area where the tick is attached with my left hand while I pull it off with my right. But I am also a 240 lb. male (OK, I should be more like a 215 lb. male, but you get the point). For those folks who don't have the strength to cleanly pull the tick with their hands, slowly working the tick out with a pair of tweezers seems to be the preferred method.