It’s from France
Chewie hasn’t been himself lately. He’s been biting and chewing at his back end/tail area. So much so, that he has torn out fur and been biting right on his skin. The Hubby went out a few nights ago and got him some spray to calm the irritation and an “E-Collar”.
Now, you might be tempted to think an E Collar is somehow shaped in a similar manner as the letter E. You’d be wrong. It’s one of those horrible collars so animals can’t lick or otherwise get to a sore spot. Of course, this makes it incredibly funny to watch. At first, Chewie would only walk backwards. Then, miraculously, he figured out how to move forward again. But then he couldn’t sit down. Once he figured that out, he still wasn’t sure if he could lay down. Eventually he figured out he could lay down – just like he always had, only with this stupid piece of plastic in the way. Although he realized there was no way he was getting under the bed with that stupid thing on.
So it just so happened that Pansy had a vet appointment today to get her rabies shot. Since Chewie is a bad patient at the vet’s, I make The Hubby take him; thus, I am off the hook and only have to take one dog at a time. The vet and the vet tech are both super nice, and start off by asking how Pansy is doing (although they forgot to ask how I was doing). I said that she was fine, but Chewie was having some problems. I told them about his itching and licking, and mentioned that I had just today seen a few fleas on Pansy, but not Chewie.
Apparently Chewie is having an allergic reaction to the fleas. It’s not the flea bites that are irritating him, it’s the mere presence of the fleas and their saliva. The vet used the analogy of a person being allergic to bee stings. Gee, I can totally sympathize now, huh?
So Frontline was recommended. I’ve purchased Frontline before and remembered it was horribly expensive at the vet’s. So I told them I would buy it at a store and just paid for Pansy’s rabies shot.
Well, you can buy Frontline at the store — if you use their online store. Most of the big pet care chains — cough, cough, PetSmart, Petco — either don’t carry it or only have it online. I got some decent pricing at 1800PetMeds, but it’s Friday and it wouldn’t even ship until Monday – so it’d be mid week before there was any relief. The pricing at Costco was great, but we’d have to renew our membership for $100 to buy the stuff at the cheap price. We did manage to find it at the pet store at the mall – the same place we bought Chewie, actually. So, $112 later we have one box of Frontline Plus for Dogs and one box of Frontline Plus for Cats. I opted for the Plus version since it has more killing power. And basically, you want as much killing power as you can get when dealing with fleas. Plus it will keep those nasty ticks away. I will order some (much) cheaper Frontline Plus online and not have to worry too much about the shipping times. Hopefully I will just have to do it for the next 3 months and then, with a little luck and the onslaught of winter, the fleas will disappear instead of my money.
So as The Hubby and I were driving home from the mall, I looked at the package. And I swear this is the truth – the packaging used the word “bitches”. As in, this product is safe to use on pregnant, lactating and breeding bitches. I mean, how often do you get to see that on a package? So I look a little further. The manufacturer of the product is Merial, a company based in Duluth, GA. But — it’s manufactured in France. Figures! Only the French could get away with that wording on their packaging…