You can squish each fat flea with a pill on your thumb if you want to be funny. The bigger idiot would take two pills and squish a flea between them, like a sandwich. The dumbest idea would be to throw the pills at your dog, hoping they would squish the fleas to death, like killer asteroids falling on earth.

Seriously, if your pet keeps scratching and biting his fur, you have to get up and deal with those tiny, hardy parasites that feed on your pet’s blood, and even yours. Stop them before them feel quite comfy in your own home.

But how do you do that? Giving flea medication to your pet is one effective way of keeping fleas from reproducing every day and reducing them to an ignorable inconvenience. Of course, it comes with the aid of other flea-control methods that are recommended by veterinarians and pet owners who have successful dealt with their pets’ flea problem.

Flea pills are administered orally to pets suffering from the little freeloaders that feed on the pets’ blood. They are taken regularly, its frequency dependent on the pills’ proven length of efficacy. Most pills work by killing the flea eggs, thus stopping the fleas’ vicious life cycle.

The pills carry chemicals that are then absorbed in your pet’s bloodstream, making the blood highly toxic to fleas, which are poisoned no sooner than they bite their host’s skin. These chemicals are not detected by the feeding fleas; of course, fleas aren’t known to have noses like their canine host.

Oral medication for flea infestation is more convenient for pet owners compared to other flea-control products. Just add a pill in your pet’s chow and minutes after – voila – the massacre starts. Pets that have highly sensitive noses and taste buds might not eat if they sense something weird in their chow, but there’s a solution: food-flavored pills.

For maximum effect, flea pills are often used together with other flea-control products. There are plenty of fleas outdoor, always waiting for their furry ride. Getting rid of these parasites once and for all is impossible, thus flea-control measures must be used continuously. The goal is to keep fleas outside your house as much as possible.

Flea pills are supplemental, not stand-alone cures. They only stop the reproductive cycle of fleas that are already in your pet’s fur, but there are fleas outside ready to hop in as the pill’s effect dies down. And you can’t give your pet a flea pill a day; it’s not a vitamin pill.

In warm months, fleas get more aggressive as animals go outside to play. Vet clinics are often swamped with anemic, dehydrated flea-infested cats and dogs. Serious cases call for therapeutic dips, intravenous feedings, antibiotics and re-hydration, to keep pets alive.

You don’t want your pets to suffer from flea attacks, do you? So start planning effective flea-control measures. It’s advisable to give your pet regular flea pills regularly (once a month if the product promises 30-day efficacy period), but not as a stand-alone, cure-all solution.

Other products to consider are flea collars, dips, shampoos, combs, powder, sprays, and, if your house is already swarming with these bloodsuckers, flea bombs or foggers.

Topical solutions – sprays, shampoos – can be effectively used with flea pills. Topicals are liquids administered by placing a drop or drops of them in pets fur, and most topicals claim to shield pets for one month. Use it together with the pills if you don’t want to take any chances. However, for dogs who love to get wet outdoor, topicals won’t work as promised.

Some oral flea meds work like birth-control pills for fleas. Their active ingredients make fleas sterile, so the present batch of fleas pestering your pets dies out, with no itchy larvae to leave their rich buffet to.

Other flea pills get down to business quickly. They kill right away, targeting not the reproductive system but the nervous system. The parasites are paralyzed until they die.

How they kill fleas, however, is not important. The reality is that there are always plenty of fleas waiting outside to breed in your pet’s fur. You need other flea killers in your plan.