I find this an interesting topic. I had two dogs who lived to be 17 and 18 years old. One a Border Collie and the other an Icelandic Sheepdog. The started out there lives in Arizona and then spent time in both Florida and Michigan and then back to Arizona. Anyway, when we lived in florida my Border Collie became itchy and was diagnosed with allergies, in Florida their snap test does not test for Lymes disease as it is not prevelant there. Finally after three years with no good results, I am up in Michigan with the dogs and find out the Border Collie has Lymes and have him treated and all the allergy problems go away. Quite interesting. We always used frontline on the dogs and also checked daily for tics, It still didn’t prevent the Lymes disease. I now have two dogs again an Icelandic Sheepdog who is 4 now and an Australian Cattle Dog Mix who is now 5. I winter in Arizona and summer in Michigan. When I got the cattle dog I decided I would vaccinate him for Lymes because of spending time in Michigan, after the Lymes Vaccine he developed ITP and almost died, he never has gotten Lymes though, therefore I decided not to vaccinate the Icelandic Sheepddog, she ended up with lymes at age 1, was treated and has been doing well, I do worry about her though because my Border Collie who had undiagnosed Lymes for three years developed sever arthritis. Anyway I just wanted to share my story, because although all these dogs were on frontline and also checked for tics daily, two of the four ended up with lymes and the other two did not. I also want to mention that while the Michigan property is in the woods, they do have a grass fenced yard, which is mowed short and treated for pests at the beginning of the season with an organic product two months before the dogs arrive. I’m not a believer in using pesticides around my dogs, yet I do use the frontline. In conclusion I am not sure of the best thing to do, I do know I will never give another one of my dog’s a Lyme Vaccine after what happened to my boy. I haven’t had any adverse reactions with the frontline, however I only use while in Michigan for about four months per year, fortunately in the area of Arizona I live the rest of the year we don’t have a big problem with fleas and tics. I’m not even so sure about the frontline though because it didn’t prevent two of the four dogs from getting lymes. I would not feel comfortable giving my dogs an oral flea and tick preventative, seems like giving them poison but, I don’t know enough about that oral medication to give sound advise.
