Buckshot wrote:
Fleas are not the only way a dog can acquire tapes.
The two common tapes most deal with are the Dipylidium caninum (usually what a dog has/ caused by fleas) and the Taenia species.
Taenia Pisiformis tapes are not caused by fleas.
Good point, and this is true if the dog is actually eating raw kills.
Regarding what I said about Safe Guard (
fenbendazole), here is a link to support what I said:
http://www.merckvetmanual.com/mvm/index ... 191507.htmHere are two selected quotes:
"However, with the widespread development of resistance and the availability of more efficient and easier to administer compounds, their use is rapidly decreasing.""In dogs and cats, mebendazole, fenbendazole (Safe Guard), febantel, and flubendazole are used for treatment of roundworms, hookworms, and tapeworms. However, treatment must be given BID (twice daily) for 3 days. Fenbendazole has been used in a divided dose regimen in bitches against tissue-dwelling larvae of Toxocara canis and Ancylostoma caninum ; daily administration of 50 mg/kg to bitches from day 40 of pregnancy through day 14 after parturition resulted in pups free of both parasites, although this has limited application in practice."Since the dosage for Safe Guard is 1ml per 4.4 lb, and since you have to give 6 doses to use the drug properly, and since the drug is so expensive, you really have to pour a lot of money down the drain (and hassle with administration 6x per dog to boot) to treat a yard of dogs.
Considering a 50 lb dog would require ~11.5 ml of Safe Guard to worm it properly (1 ml per 4.4 lb, given twice daily, for 3 days in a row) ... this means ultimately you must give a total of 69 ml of Panacur
for each dog ... and since Safe Guard is so expensive (~ $100.00 per 1000 ml bottle) ... this means you're spening ~ $7 per dog. If you have a yard of 10 dogs, you'll ultimately be using 690ml to treat the lot of them (more than half a 1000ml bottl) ...
and spending about $70 ... just to worm ten dogs.
Compare that to spending only $0.21 (twenty-one cents!) per dog using either
pyrantel pamoate or
ivermection, and you quickly begin to realize
you're only spending $2.10 to treat a yard of ten 50-lb dogs by comparison. (Not to mention you don't have to hassle with the Safe Guard for 6x in a row either.)
That is roughly a $67 difference in price to worm your dogs, not to mention literally 5x less hassle.
Safe Guard really should only be used for whipworm. So if you got a confirmed case of whips, sure, go ahead and use the Safe Guard. But it really is a waste of time, hassle, and money to use Safe Guard regularly for roundworm and hookworm, as there are better (and cheaper) ways to do this. And even for tapeworm, the preferred method to handle these is
Droncit (
praziquantel), which also is cheaper, more effective, and less hassle to give for tapes than Safe Guard ... especially if you know where to buy the generic, off-label equivalents
Hope this helps you and others save some time and money ...
Take care,
Jack
.