Diotemaceous earth: an affordable, effective anti-flea treatment in the Philippines

Mini schnauzer owners who struggle with ticks and fleas will be glad to know that there is a safe and effective way to control these pests—diotemaceous earth (DE).

I first tried DE several years ago when we had a sudden flea infestation that started from out of nowhere. All my dogs are treated with topical anti-flea and anti-tick treatments, so I was completely at a loss as to why we still had a problem.

This is how I understood that I needed to control ticks and fleas in the environment. I learned that no matter how I tried to protect my dogs using all sorts of medications and flea collars, I will never succeed if I did not address the fleas in the environment. That’s because the fleas on a dog constitute just 25% of fleas at any one time; the remaining 75% are found in the environment.

Of course, I didn’t know how and where to start since I didn’t really know where to look in the first place. The garden was an easy answer, but I had already built a fence to stop them from playing there unsupervised.

I consulted the pest control people who checked my house for termites, and they helped me know where to look.  Needless to say, this meant carrying a flashlight and checking out the floor, corners, and cracks all around the house. I crawled around to check where these pests could be, and finally found some of them in our garage.

At first, I used a strong pesticide recommended by the folks at the pet shop where I got my supplies. The problem was that this had such a noxious smell, and frankly, it scared the wits out of me knowing I was dealing with a strong poison.

The other problem was that after one month, I again saw fleas on the garage wall, which I attributed to the fact that the poison must have been washed off by our daily cleaning.

This was when I finally decided to try out DE, which I heard was an extremely effective pesticide. I was able to get a bag from those selling gardening supplies, and I was glad to discover that it was very affordable. To my surprise, it worked very well! Ever since I used DE on our yard, I never had any more infestations among my dogs.

To those of you struggling with fleas and ticks, don’t stop with treating just your dog. Check out your premises and check what DE can do for you.

Also read: Anti-flea and anti-tick treatments that work in the Philippines