Worming/Flea/Ticks

jbkmum

Morning!

Writing on behalf of my mother who has three dogs (I know right!)

She currently pays £12 per dog for Vets4Pets Complete Care which is £432 per year.

Her dogs are all three years old, and spaniels.

As she's just retired she is looking to reduce costs. £432 a year sound a lot doesn't it? I saw on an old post that someone worms their dogs with Cestem which by my maths looks to be about £16 a year for the three dogs.

But what would she do about fleas and ticks. I think the dogs are on bravecto as they kept getting ticks and since starting bravecto they haven't had any issues

Any advice appreciated

SensibleSarah

I have 1 dog and 4 cats, so feel the pain of preventative meds costing an arm and a leg!
To be honest, I don't treat my pets that regularly as they are fairly low risk in terms of where we live/work (none have ever had any ticks) so maybe do fleas/tick and worming treatments about every 3 months at most. I try to keep the chemicals to a minimum.

I buy drontal for worms online - which isn't the cheapest but is certainly cheaper than vets. I use Advantage spot on for fleas and ticks - again, there are cheaper ones out there but it is pretty effective - whereas others I have tried have grown to be ineffective e.g. both types of Frontline. A year's worth of these for my dog and cats (based on treating 3-4 times per year) works out at around £70 when bought online from someone like Vet UK.

jbkmum

Thank you Sarah, what do you do about vaccines

SensibleSarah

The dog gets her boosters every year, mainly as occasionally a dogwalker might be used and he requires this. The 3 oldest cats haven't been vaccinated for around a decade. They had the first 4 years of vaccinations when they were younger but after one of them had a terrible reaction and nearly died, I took the decision (after a lot of research) to stop them. My youngest cat (just turned 4) still has her boosters at the moment (has vac for life so won't have to pay for any more) but I can see at some point I will stop as I genuinely don't believe they need annual vaccinations at all once they've had a few, at least in the kind of environment mine live in.