Pintesting - Chemical-Free - Flea Spray

I have no idea what these fleas are on. There may be less of them but any of them is really unacceptable. My husband decided it was time to try a flea bath on the dog again and I decided to try out a chemical-free flea spray.

Todays pintest comes via this pin and the information found here.

The more common oils for repelling insects, including fleas, are:
-       Lavender
-       Citronella
-       Peppermint
-       Eucalyptus
-       Cedar
-       Lemongrass

I currently had peppermint and Eucalyptus.

Flea, tick and mosquito spray for dogs:
In a 32 ounce spray bottle filled with distilled water, add 10 drops of one of the oils listed above.  Shake the bottle well and mist your dog every day.  You can also spray this mixture on their bedding, around doorways and along baseboards to repel fleas.
This makes a good bug spray for people, too.

It was true, a lot of recipes for chemical-free bug sprays contained similar ingredients to some of those for flea sprays. So I took a cue from one of the sites that said using a mixture of oils usually provides better protection from bugs and used Peppermint, Eucalyptus, and Tee tree oil.

My spray bottle was around 18 ounces and I didn't have distilled water. I used purified water. I put 5 - 6 drops of each oil in the bottle and shook it.

Once again we play the waiting game.

Fleas Part III

Despite our best efforts the fleas, are still here. They aren't as bad. Maybe the dog picked them back up over the holiday while she stayed on the family farm. Who knows.

I'm building up my supply of essential oils to pintest a flea spray.

Fleas - The Waiting Game

The fleas are still here. They're very hearty little buggers (much to my chagrin). The toll it was taking on the dog was just too much.

I started waking up with more and more flea bites in the morning. Worst of all - I found fleas in my daughters hair once after she rolled around on the floor playing. I felt like I was the worst worst house-keeper and that I had my family living in some flea infested hovel (my mother didn't help me feel any better about all of this either.)

My father bought a flea spray to be applied to the dog pretty much every day, we bought the dog a flea collar, we bombed our house twice, and then we had to give the dog a flea bath. Once again we will have to wait.

I found a pin talking about an at home spray you can make using essential oils, but essential oils run around $10 - 20 per bottle at my local health food store and the mix calls for quite a few. I just couldn't afford it.

Now you may be thinking, "with all that was purchased, surely you could have afforded the natural solutions." We really don't have a lot of money, and I really didn't expect this flea problem to go this far. Maybe I'll slowly purchase the necessary essential oils to create the natural flea spray but for the moment I have a lot of other things on my plate.

It seems that a kitten our daughter was playing with at my mother-in-laws house was patient zero. I heard a lot of my brother-in-laws friends found themselves victims of a flea infestation. It just seems my own household was the one that suffered to this extreme degree.

One of the friends said that his mother suggested banana peels. He he said he bought some bananas and left the peels in the corners of a few of the rooms and the fleas were gone in days. He also made sure to point out he's never home so they may have just starved to death.

Dealing With Fleas The Chemical-Free Way

One of many unfortunate facts of life is that dogs. get. fleas. And this year my dog got them while we were at my in-laws farm. My daughters "house kitten" (a kitten that is hers but only lives at grandma's house) had fleas and the very moment my husband noticed them I knew our dog was doomed.

We became suspicious that she had fleas but had seen no immediate evidence so I tried two quick tests to find out if we did in fact have fleas.

1) A plate of syrup.
          Place a plate of syrup out in the floor over night. When you wake up - check it for fleas.
                          I think I may have even done this twice and not found any fleas.
2) Warm soapy water.
         The fleas are supposed to be attracted to the heat, jump into the soapy water, and die.
                          The article I read suggested that I place the dish of water under a lamp to keep it warm and enticing for the fleas. I used the lights for my light box. In the morning there were no fleas.

Eventually the fleas made their obvious appearance. The dog, thankfully, wasn't covered with them but seemed to have three or four that we could easily spot on her behind.

We tried the standard attack of using medication, but it didn't work (we tried three different applications). Months later we still had them. One night I sat eating carrots and hummus when I looked down to see a flea had jumped into my cold hummus and died. I was fed up.

Care 2 Make A Difference mentioned something I could try to fight the fleas.

Again, I turn to borax in my time of need. I put a very small amount into a measuring cup and sprinkled a bit on the areas my dog spends the majority of her time in the hope that the release of boric acid would kill any remaining fleas.

The Care 2 Make A Difference post doesn't say how long you should leave the borax on the carpet so after a super quick Google search I had my answer.

I could barely get the dog out of my way to put down the borax in the first place so it was no surprise that after it was down she went back to the area I was most worried about so I didn't bother using a broom to push the borax down into the carpet.

Because we have a toddler that likes to drop food on the carpet only to pick it back up and put it back in her mouth if you're not looking, I was nervous about letting the borax sit too long. We vacuumed it up after 17.5 hours.

We were left to play the wait-and-see game.