yesterday I had the scare of my life... as long as I've been doing dogs I've never been so panicked
I've been doing some research and found that the least toxic of topical flea meds was Cyphenothrin, a synthetic pyrenthin, so I got some for the youngsters well Star our 5 mth old had a SEVERE reaction !!. About two hrs after application I went into their area and she looked like she was having a seizure drooling , uncontrable shaking, etc I picked her up and washed her twice the shaking was awful and by this time 10minutes has gone by and she's not getting better this was NOT a seizure I picked her up again and drove to the vets an hour away with my 45lb puppy in my lap having fits but because I honestly didnt know if she was going to die I didnt want her in the crate in the back alone if she did..... he saw her and basically said she was reacting in a manner the same as a cat would and it could be fatal if left untreated. It was her muscles clenching with tremors that appeared to look like a seizure. She was giving a shot of cortisone and is on a 10 day prescription of methocarbamol to help overcome the muscle tremors. She will be fine but it will take a few days before her body is back to normal . She had problems yesterday and did not use the bathroom at all but did manage to at least pee this morning. I'm so glad that I caught this in time if I had left to run errands or something I could have lost her so at least I learned a lesson the hard way but it could have been worse....
Lesson Learned NEVER use a medication of any sort without closely watching for a reaction and just because you've used it before doesnt mean that everytime you use it will be okay.
I have to be very careful with her now in regards to flea meds Doc says next time it will be much worse but likely we will never use them on her again.....Hope you can learn from my experience
Sorry to hear about you puppy. The safest flea meds out there is Advantage or Frontline. Pyrenthin's like you found out can be very bad and WILL kill cats.
When I worked at vets, we would have several animals ever year come in with reactions to the flea brands that are sold in pet store. Like the stuff Walmart would carry. I believe it's Harts or something like that. Very toxic, always with the symptoms that Barbara described. We made complaints to the companies with out luck.
That had the same problem with Frontline Plus then a much worse reaction on Revolution. She exhibited the identical symptoms beginning at 11 months initially. Immediate administration of benadryl and off to the vet on my advice who gave it in an injection that helped. She was fine a couple of hours later. With Revolution it took much longer and more than Benadryl, she's now on holistic remedies.
