Harsh chemicals found in most flea and tick preventions can be detrimental to both you and your pets. From concentrated formulas used to spray around your yard, to the topical solutions and year round flea collars, most contain harsh chemicals that seep through the skin and into the blood stream. These chemicals are also inhaled and often ingested.
You can find thousands of testimonials from pet owners who have spoken out about some of the common side effects from flea and tick preventions. I’m not here to go into detail, a simple search online can do that. It’s important to know that many of the images are hard to look at and unfortunately many of the stories end in tragedy.
One of the less talked about side effects though, is the long term side effects. I wasn’t aware of this until after my dog passed away, but his particular cancer was linked to common pesticides found in flea and tick control.
For the longest time, I couldn’t understand how my dog got cancer. I truly believed I was doing everything right to keep him healthy. He was diagnosed with TCC bladder cancer in January 2016 at 11 years old and passed away horrifically, just 6 months later. TCC is a very aggressive type of cancer. After extensive research and trying to figure out how this happened to my baby, I came across an article that talked about the connection between flea and tick treatments and dog cancer. After further research, I found that TCC bladder cancer is believed to be most commonly caused by the chemicals and pesticides found in these common treatments. However, TCC is only one form of cancer that is linked to these preventions.
It never crossed my mind in the 11 years of Titus’s life, that the preventative measures I was taking with him were potentially harming him. Because there were no immediate side effects, I thought they were safe. I was wrong.
There are many high quality all natural products out there that work great for flea, tick, and even heart worm prevention. It’s important to find a reputable brand with well sourced ingredients as not all products out there work very well. I’ve tried many, and many have failed. I live in Middle Tennessee where fleas and ticks run rampant. There’s no way around treating my pets, so I had to find something safe and extremely effective.
I’ve listed below, some amazing and reputable products that I have found to work great for preventing and treating fleas and ticks. My pets are going on 4 years of only using natural prevention, and it’s working!
It’s also important to note that a balanced gut plays a vital role in natural prevention. A healthy diet along with a high quality probiotic will help keep their gut healthy.
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Precious Paws 
We have woods in the backyard with lots of wildlife and subsequently, we find ticks on ourselves fairly frequently. Our dogs are treated for fleas and ticks with a product our vet recommends. However, I’ll have to look into some of these and see if they are effective. I hate to use harsh chemicals on our dogs, but I also don’t want them to have fleas and ticks!
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I’m so sorry that Titus’ cancer was linked to flea/tick medications, how awful. I’ve used some natural products for my dogs. I used Wondercide in the yard and it worked well – you have to reapply often but it worked well. I wasn’t ever able to find a good natural tick medicine though. There was one I tried but you needed a huge amount of drops in their food every day, it wasn’t very user friendly. That amber collar is so pretty!
Love & Biscuits,
Dogs Luv Us and We Luv Them
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We used EasyDefense for a couple of years. Now, between Covid and whatever else, we cannot get it up here in Canada 😦
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This is a great list of natural products. In the past, I’ve used many natural options in the past, however, with our current pup they aren’t enough. Dav girl has severe atopic dermatitis, which means that a flea or tick bite causes her a lot more discomfort than most pups. For that reason, we’ve moved to some of the chemical-based options simply because they seem to be more efficient in preventing issues with her. That being said, we still use natural options on some of our other pets.
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My mom’s poodle mix is exactly the same. One single flea bite will cause so much discomfort and the itching is unbearable. She has to use chemical treatment with him when it’s “flea & tick season”. During the fall and winter he does fine with natural products. It took a long time find the right products that worked for my pets and I do use more than one natural treatment. For instance, Penelope has the wears the Amber collar year round, the natural flea collar during spring and summer (flea & tick season), the yard is treated with wondercide and I spray soft surfaces with the in home/pet wondercide. It’s a little bit of work but it does the job for us
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Thanks for the list of natural products! We just started making sure our crew was getting probiotics because of all the things that can be affected by gut health. It’s crazy how much there is to keep learning about everything!
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Titus looks an absolute gem, I am sorry you lost such a lovely boy.
There are so many tick and flea products out there. It is critical to have a trustworthy source that ensures you protect your dog’s health. Balance is key, with each dog parent needing to know their dog, and their environment so they can protect them as much as possible.
We have cats and use monthly flea drops, thankfully New Zealand is not big on ticks * shudder * they certainly look nasty for ANY dog to get..
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I’m so sorry your dog passed from cancer. That must have been so horrible to go through! I’ve always been very pro natural products however, I’ve tried SO many natural flea/tick preventatives over the years and have never found one that was 100% effective for us. My senior dog is VERY allergic to fleas and my younger boy has already been exposed to Lyme disease once (while we were using natural tick prevention). Horrible flea reactions and Lyme disease were scary enough for us that I opted to start using preventatives from our vet for part of the year. It’s totally a ‘darned’ if you do ‘darned’ if you don’t situation for us. I will be keeping my fingers crossed that someday I’ll find some magical all natural, toxin free, alternative that’s 100% effective.
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