I'm a naturalist at heart and prefer holistic remedies whenever I can. That said, I use topical flea/tick preventative warm months as I live in New England and spend a large amount of time out in the woods with the dogs. Lyme disease is just too prevalent up here and I've seen dogs crippled with it (I'm also extremely cautious about it for me and my husband as well for the same reason).
I've never had a problem with fleas in almost 15yrs of owning big dogs, it's just never been an issue for me. Ticks are always the problem. I wish I could just get a stand-alone tick preventative.
I had read a great article on Mother Earth News about how a guy had a few chickens roaming free range in his yard and they kept his yard completely tick-free, they were just little tick-killing machines. I had considered that but Nadia would most definitely eat the chickens lol.
I'm not a huge fan of over vaccinating either people or animals. My dogs get the big three (rabies, distemper combo, and bordetella) and I only get the bordetella on the off chance that I might have an emergency and be forced to board them somewhere (and no one around here accepts dogs for boarding with out bordetella vaccination). I'm also not a fan of monthly heartworm preventative though I do use it- I have a hard time justifying to myself that I am dosing my healthy dog with poison to "keep" her healthy (but most of the time if you say you don't want to give your dog HW preventative people look at you like you beat your dog with a club).
However, Bella and I both just woke up from a 2 hour nap if that falls into the lazy category :razzberry:
