<p>My daughter who lives at home has been getting bites on her legs for about a week. I might have had similar bites (2) a couple of weeks ago. I DON’T THINK they are bed bugs. I have checked her bed/mattress a few times thoroughly and see no signs. Washed all the bedding in hot water. </p>
<p>I’m wondering about fleas. We got a dog in January - first pet in the house. He seems fine. We do Frontline for him, but he is outside alot and was on the beach etc. this summer a lot at our cottage. Daughter spends alot of time on the floor with the dog in our only carpeted area of the house, the living room. She also has been spending some time on the carpet sorting photos, eating snacks, etc. </p>
<p>The bites are only on her legs. Somewhat itchy, red and raised - if she puts cortizone cream on them they don’t itch. Bites are not in a row, but random. </p>
<p>Opinions? Recommendations? I read an idea to put a bowl of dishsoap on the carpet at night with a desk light shining above the bowl and see if any bugs collect overnight. Maybe I should vacuumn daily and empty out the filter? </p>
<p>Should I take the dog to the vet even though he doesn’t show any signs of being bothered? He is short haired - a corgi mix. </p>
<p>Because I had a bite or two a couple of weeks ago I also tend to think it is not bed bugs. And I just don’t see any signs of them - plus I would think they would be elsewhere on her body,not just on her legs. </p>
<p>Sounds to me like fleas too. I had this happen to me…just bites on the lower legs. And I was the only one in the family affected. We had 2 cats and a dog at the time, all had been properly treated/medicated to prevent them. It just was an exceptionally bad “flea season” in our area. We ended up doing a flea carpet shampoo on the areas where the animals spent their time and did an extra medicated flea bath for each animal. Problem solved.</p>
<p>abasket do you have a flea comb or some other grooming tool you can inspect doggie with? The most likely place to find some fleas is on his belly, closer to the back legs, where the fur is finest. If he has fleas, there will probably be little bits of flea poop even if you don’t find the fleas themselves. </p>
<p>Has your D spent a lot of time outdoors recently? We didn’t have pets when I was a kid, but sometimes we got a lot of what Grandma called “punky bites”. Some kind of gnat type thing. Insect repellant helps there.</p>
<p>Will check closer on doggie when I get home - I usually brush him a couple of times a week and he isn’t really itching/scratching at all - only occasionally when he first wakes - does the paw itch around the collar area for a few seconds. </p>
<p>Is there a product someone can recommend for the carpet? We don’t have much -just a sunporch area and a 8 x 10 binded carpet in the living room. All else is hardwood - though I’ve read that I should vacuum well there too. </p>
<p>Feel bad for my daughter! But she definitely spends more time on the floor with the dog, doing school projects and sometimes eating her snacks. Thought I’d also check the couch she always sits on though the dog rarely is allowed there.</p>
<p>So would we maybe not actually SEE the fleas???</p>
<p>Whenever one of our dogs has had fleas, we usually find them crawling about on the dog. However, even if you don’t find one, they leave “evidence”, so you may find that. Fleas have to find a host, so they won’t hang around your carpet long if there is no likely candidate to latch onto.</p>
<p>Fleabusters - it is nontoxic, except to fleas. It is a powder that you apply to your carpet (sprinkle it on and then use a push-broom to spread). It generally lasts a year, but you can’t clean the carpet during that time (you can vacuum all you want). Works amazingly well for fleas.</p>
<p>Well, checked the dog and see nothing. Am going to do a super thorough vacuum of the carpet, rugs and wood floors and baseboards. Going to put out a bowl of dishsoap on the carpet tonight with a desk lamp shining over it tonight - have read that if they are in the carpet, you will find them in the morning in the bowl. Yuck.</p>
<p>Also TORE daughter’s bedroom apart - took everything off the floor, completely disassembled her bed for the 2nd time this week. Examined the mattress, box springs and bed frame and headboard and saw nothing. Vacuumed them anyway. No sign of any bedbugs. Her mattress pad and sheets are white as can be. (at least the room is super clean now!!!)</p>
<p>Will see what progress we make over the weekend - if she keeps getting bites over the weekend, I’ll take her into the doc to see if I can get any verification. And I’m telling her to stay off the carpet!!!</p>
<p>I would think if it were fleas you would see them. I have very occasionally had one jump on me and I felt it and I saw it. Last October I was getting bitten by something. It was mostly my torso. I was going insane. I thought it might be bedbugs and inspected the mattress and would wake up in the middle of the night to look, and saw nothing. We were due for a new mattress anyway, so we got one and I never got another bite. DH had been to a hotel a few weeks prior to that so maybe he picked up bedbugs there.</p>
<p>This may not be it, but I thought I’d share. My daughter came home from college in May with what appeared to be small, random insect bites on her legs - round, red, raised, but only slightly itchy. Significantly more on one leg than the other. As the summer wore on, they got worse - neither of us could figure it out, so she finally went to the dermatologist. It was razor burn. He gave her an antibiotic and told her to stop shaving until it cleared up. </p>
<p>I did suspect shaving, but the bumps were very scattered and red, and around that time, everyone else had a few bites from black flies, etc., so it was confusing. It did not look like razor burn, though.</p>
<p>Make sure you treat your sofa/chairs for bugs also. We were having a similar issue. Husband was only occ. getting the bites, me more often. Well, I put my feet up on the sofa more than he does (he has a recliner, no, I am not lazier! LOL). Figured out that something, we thing a rogue flea, or mites, or something was in the sofa. Treated it with cleaning and non-toxic spray, and bites ended. Took forever to figure it out. But glad we did!
No fleas on our dog either. I figure that if she did bring something in, they vacated her quickly because of frontline. And may have ended up in our sofa. Or it could have been something completely different!</p>
<p>Itchy bites only on the lower legs are very likely to be fleas. We have had this problem in the past esp when we had a dog. </p>
<p>Use the frontline, give the dog a fleabath, and shake the powder on the rug & vacuum assiduously. If you have wood floors, the eggs are laid in the little cracks so you have to keep vacuuming there till the larvae are removed as they hatch.</p>
<p>Hopefully you’re getting at whatever it is!</p>
<p>Our dogs have had flea problems lately for the first time. The groomer told us that when you get a sudden rain (like we did in late August), it will bring flea eggs to the surface of the ground, they hatch, and then jump on poor doggie. According to both our groomer and vet, this time of year is the worst.</p>
<p>The vet also told me that when you use Frontline or a similar product, it should be a few days before and after a bath. You want the dog’s natural oils to be present. I had been using it just after a bath so it wasn’t as effective. Nowhere on the packaging does it tell you this. It may take us another month or two to break the whole flea cycle.</p>
<p>The vet said, of course, you can’t use something like Frontline too often or it’s dangerous to the dog. A minimum of 3 weeks apart for doses. She said not to give a flea bath or in any other way “mix insecticides” on the dogs. We’ve cleaned them off as best we could in a regular bath, and then flea combed them every day until 5 days had passed, and then they were ready for Frontline again. We also used a natural, herbal “flea repellant” that you spray lightly on. Not sure if it helped at all, but I had to try. </p>
<p>Flea combing is very helpful, but time consuming and for us it took two people. Our dogs are small and have white fur so it’s easy to see the flea poop and the fleas, but still hard to catch them with the comb. They tend to run when they know you’re combing and hideout in “armpits” and other small areas. I’ve gotten less squeamish about the whole thing but the dogs run too when they see me coming with that comb!</p>
<p>An update. Took D to the doc yesterday - she had just a couple more bites but they were really irritated (warm to the touch and swollen like a fresh mosquito/bee bite). </p>
<p>Gourmetmom, you were on the right track! Seems she has “folliculitis” - an infection of the hair folicle on her leg! A bacterial thing likely irritated by shaving. She has orders not to shave until healed (ha - her all-girls school only allows skirts!) and to apply an expensive bacterial cream. We threw away the current shavers and I totally scrubbed the shower! (wasn’t told to, just made me feel better!!!). Hoping we don’t see many/any new spots and that the cream helps healing.</p>
<p>Who knew? Hopefully this is correct, resolves and we can breath a sigh of relief that bugs are not the problem. :)</p>
<p>That what my D had - folliculitis caused by shaving. Her derm said that it has nothing to do with hygiene and it is a matter of shaving against the hair growth which irritates the skin - the more shaving, the more irritation. I did the same thing - threw away the razors, etc., but it only cleared up when she stopped shaving for a while (tough in the summer because she wears mostly skirts and shorts). She really had a problem with this - stopped for a while, and ended up shaving “around” the irritations. We had a few arguments about it.</p>
<p>She was prescribed an oral antibiotic which also helped quite a bit. To make sure it doesn’t happen again, he gave her a shaving “tutorial” - lubricate the skin well, don’t press down hard, and shave in the direction of the hair growth.</p>
<p>Hope it clears up soon for your D - tell her knee socks only until it is gone!</p>
<p>My D had this problem, and was advised by her dermatologist to use to use a less efficient razor–not one of those five edge types that get very close, but an ordinary single blade type or an electric razor. That helped a lot.</p>
<p>Good advice on a more delicate shaver. And I will going to buy some of that women’s shaving cream type stuff for the legs. We had been buying it but I haven’t restocked it lately…</p>
<p>And I DID apologize to doggie and gave him a good snuggle without searching for fleas!!!</p>
Insect repellant helps there.</p>