Be careful, very careful if you choose to use this stuff on your dogs!

We have used similar topical squeeze-on products for years to control fleas on our dogs. They are extremely easy to apply and protect our pets and us from fleas for a month. Because we’ve been on the road and in the warm lately, they have got treated monthly for more than the past year. As I said, we’ve used similar chemicals for years and have never had an issue.

It was time for their monthly while we were in Mississippi so we  made a trip to a Pet Smart to get some. We had never used this SentryPro XFC before but it looked like it was worth  try, besides, the dog in the picture looks exactly like Jason and Elizabeth’s  dog Izzy. She’s such a sweet dog, the product must be good!. We even bought a spare package while we were there.

This time though there was a huge difference in the results. Within a couple of hours of treatment both Buster and Angel started getting very agitated. As the day wore on, they became more and more stressed. To this point we had not connected the dots.  By 10 oclock at night they are going crazy, Mar made the connection and rinsed them off. By midnight they were racing around the coach, jumping up and down and looked they were on speed or something. By now we are beginning to think we are going to lose them both. Marilyn this time washed their backs off thoroughly. Within an hour or two they began to settle down a little and by about 2 or 3 AM we were all back to sleep. By the next evening, they were both prettty much back to normal.

Today I emailed Sergeant’s Pet Care Products to tell them of the  problems we had with their product and then for the first time googled SentryPro XFC. Look what comes back!  Obviously, we were very lucky. Why would a company that makes this many pet products (they also sell the Hartz line) offer this product? Why wouldn’t they at least change the warning on their packaging? Why would Pet Smart and others sell it? Is it really all about corporate greed or am I missing something?

 I can promise you that the next time it’s time for a flea treatment it won’t be some over the counter product bought a Pet Smart or other pet store. I’ll be taking our dogs back to the vet in the next few days and we’ll come home with a few months of the good stuff.

I can also promise you that at least in the short term, until this is resolved, I’ll do my best to not buy any product manufactured by Sergeant’s Pet Care Products, Inc, Omaha Ne.

I’ll let you know what Sergeants and Pet Smart say in their replies. For your part please foward this post to anyone you know who has pets. I sure wish we had been aware of this problem. We could have lost our dogs.

April 16: Today we received a reply from Sergeant”s offering their apologies, explaining their position “statistically, this doesn’t happen often”. They have offered to replace the product with another or provide us with a refund. I believe we’ll take the refund. From here on we’ll be a lot more careful.