Do I Need to Treat My Family for Fleas?

When you find that your pet has fleas, you may begin to notice them around your home. You may also notice a few flea bites on you or your children. While you may have a list of things to do to treat fleas in your home, you may be wondering what you need to do about your family. According to the article, Do Fleas Live on People? fleas do not live on people and so you will not need to treat your family members for fleas. However, if you are being bitten by fleas, you will need to take these steps to solve the problem. 1. Treat Your Pets The first step is deal with any adult fleas that may be living on your pet. You can do this with a flea bath. Follow up the flea batch by using a flea comb to make sure you remove all of the fleas on your pet. After this you should consider treating your pet with a preventative. The oral medication and drops will make sure that all of the fleas that bite your pet will die. This will help in clearing up the fleas for good. 2. Wash Your Bedding and Linens Fleas will often crawl into bedding and linens. If your pet likes to hop onto your bed, chances are that there are fleas in your bed. The fleas will lay up to fifty eggs a day. These do not stick to your pet, but fall of wherever they are. This means that you may have flea eggs in your bed or on your mattress. If you wash your bedding in hot water, and dry the bedding on high heat, it will kill the fleas. 3. Vacuum the Carpet and Furniture You will need to vacuum the carpet in your entire house, including under any furniture. After you remove any bedding and pillows, you will need to vacuum the mattress, box springs and any furniture that your pets may have gotten on. This is important because it will help to remove any eggs that have not hatched yet. Be sure that you treat the dog beds either by washing it or vacuuming it. 4. Treat the Entire Home Since flea eggs fall across the floor, the fleas will hatch in your carpet, and spend their time as larvae in your carpet until they reach adulthood. This means that even with very thorough vacuuming you may miss one or two, which can quickly turn into an infestation again. The best option is hire a professional to treat your home for fleas. A flea exterminator can quickly deal with the infestation and make sure that you do not need to go through the process again. 5. Treat Your Bites You can treat any flea bites with calamine lotion or with a topical anti-itch cream. Flea bites can cause severe allergic reactions in some people. If there is extreme swelling or if you have a difficult time breathing, you should seek medical attention immediately. This is not a very common issue.