My dog is scratching & biting her tail after Capstar. Is it normal?

Hi and thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach! Sorry to hear about Blu Bear. Fleas are particularly bad near the end of summer. What you should do is either discuss this with your local vet and let them evaluate the irritated areas of his body or treat him with multimodal flea/tick products and see if that doesn't help and the skin calm down. The irritated areas may require antibiotics or topical treatment to calm down after all of this itching. Multimodal treatment involves using a vet advised topical product (Revolution, Advantix, Vectra, Effitix, etc) along with an oral flea/tick medicine (Comfortis, Bravecto, or Nexgard). You should also treat your indoor environment since the bulk of the flea problem is immature stages in the environment. Your vet can help you with all of these treatments to get Blu Bear back to normal and not scratching. The treatments you are using are very short term solutions. You need products that last longer and have residual activity for weeks to months. Good luck with Blu Bear.

It has been known to cause local skin irritation, but the itching could mean that it is working if she had fleas on her. I would see if there is a number on the package to call for advice. If the itching continues into tomorrow or if she's actually injuring herself with the scratching or starts having other symptoms such as lethargy, loss of appetite, vomiting, etc., get her seen by your vet as soon as possible.

Poor Cali is having a rough time lately! In my experience, flea shampoos, collars, and dips do not work to prevent fleas, nor do they kill them very well. I can give you a flea treatment program that can help with fleas. You did the right thing, however, by bug bombing the house and flea spraying the yard. As for treating the fleas, first I would give Cali Capstar. It's a one time pill that starts killing fleas within 30 minutes. Then follow up with a spot on treatment, such as Advantage or Revolution. Other causes of the itching of her tail include mites, ringworm, or allergies. You can take Cali into the vet to rule out these causes of her biting her tail. The vet can do blood tests, skin scrapings, and use a Wood's lamp to diagnose allergies, mites, and ringworm. Once the cause of the itching is found, the vet can prescribe the appropriate treatment.

Hi, thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach! I think the topicals sometimes cause tingling or burning. My dog didn’t like the advantix spot on. I really like the new oral flea/tick medications, monthly nexgard or simparica or every 3 month Bravecto. I hope this helps!

Hello and thank you for reaching out to Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach. Itchiness in dogs, especially on the tail or tail base, can be caused by allergies, such as to fleas, food or environmental allergens. Other causes of itchiness include bacterial infections in the skin, mites such as demodex, and/or fungal infections. Please ensure that Cookie is on a consistent flea and tick preventative medication that was prescribed by a veterinarian. Flea medications/treatments that can be purchased from a food or pet store or online are not safe or effective in dogs. The house itself must also be treated for fleas, with very frequent vacuuming and even "flea bombing". If Cookie is already on an appropriate flea medication year round, I recommend having her examined by a veterinarian for an exam and skin scrape to evaluate for the presence of an infection and/or mites. I hope this is helpful!

Thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach! I recommend that you try a product called Capstar which can help kill a lot of fleas at once. You can consider switching to another flea preventative product such as Bravecto or Frontline. In the meantime, your veterinarian can consider a medication such as prednisone or Apoquel to help with the itch for now. Good luck!

Thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach! I would not recommend that you switch him yet as this may be completely coincidental. Nexgard is a great preventative and I would give it more time before switching to something else. Hopefully the scratching is not a reaction to it as that would be quite unusual. If the itchiness continues despite giving it a few days, that would likely be due to allergies rather than a cause of using Nexgard. It really comes down to figuring out what is causing his allergies so that they can be treated or the specific allergen avoided. A secondary infection is likely and also needs to be addressed. There are many things that can cause allergies though in most cases they can be broken down into 3 big categories: flea, food and environmental allergies. Allergies are usually worked up in a stepwise fashion starting with flea allergies as this is the easiest and cheapest to take care of. If not on a flea preventative, then it would be a good idea to get started on one. If already on one then it would be a good idea to change to something else (there are many new products out in the market). If not improved in 1-3 months then it is time to move on and check for food allergies by switching to a novel diet (new protein and new carbohydrate). If that does not seem to be the issue then you are left out having to check for environmental allergies which require blood and/or skin tests. Allergies can be very frustrating to deal with at first but so rewarding at the end when we are able to treat them effectively!