Advantix II Flea Drops for Dogs Review

Advantix 2: The Best Flea Drops for Your Dog?

Let’s talk treatments for your dog.

We all know the harsh realities of being a pet owner and dogs are no exception. Sometimes it seems like your dog is doing their best Machiavellian job to get into trouble and cause you no end of hassle.

Even with proper and stringent care for your dog you can often find yourself in the situation of needing to purchase medication to fix a specific ailment that has cropped up.

In situations like these you’ll often find yourself caught out unawares with your pet suddenly suffering from an ailment that you can’t bear to see it suffer from.

Trouble with critters such as fleas and mosquitos are common and thankfully there are a wide range of different products around to help you.

When you need something like this you need it fast and you don’t want poor quality. We’re right here today to give a review of one such flea and tick medication that might just do the trick for you.

One of the best when it comes to this kind of treatment is Advantix II. We’ll be reviewing this today in full to give you the best idea of the contents and how it can help.

It’s a great quality product and when it comes to keeping your dog healthy you are in good hands with its use.

We’ll go over the content and active ingredients within the medication as well as how you should use and dose according to your dog’s breed and size.

We’ll also take a look at other reviews of Advantix to ensure you have the maximum confidence in our recommendation.

See how Advantix compared against the Seresto Flea Collar in our tests

So What is Advantix 2 for Dogs?

Advantix is a non-prescription medication that can be purchased at stores or online. It’s a topical treatment which means it is applied to the skin of your dog directly instead of a pill or injection.

The product is advised to be applied once every month in order to have best effect and works to repel any pests that can be harming or upsetting your dog such as ticks and fleas or mosquitos.

It contains a range of specific ingredients with very complicated sounding names which we’ll give a breakdown of now for those of us who aren’t scientists. Advantix flea medicine is serious business!

Advantix II Ingredients

Advantix 2 flea treatment is made up of the following.

•Imidacloprid
•Permethrin
•Pyriproxyfen

Looks like gibberish doesn’t it!

Let’s go through these three one by one.

Imidacloprid

This chemical is a powerful insecticide that works specifically to take out fleas. It does this by targeting their nervous systems. It’s a relatively common insecticide and it’s got the added benefit of it being customised to have as little impact on dogs as possible in a toxicity sense.

A funny point of interest with Imidacloprid is that it was actually designed originally to have a chemical composition very similar to nicotine. That’s because nicotine is toxic to pests. The more you know!

This is a very potent insecticide with studies showing a kill rate for fleas of nearly ninety seven percent.

It is also effective at ensuring that a flea infestation won’t return after the critters are initially taken out by it.

Permethrin

This is another insecticide that is very commonly used in a variety of products and is included in Advantix flea medicine. This one is a useful addition in that it works in tandem with the above mentioned imidacloprid in the task of killing fleas. It’s also got a great further benefit in that it will repel other pests that can affect your dog such as ticks.

The one problem to point out here when it comes to this insecticide and as a result the overall product is that it is very toxic to any cat. This is to the extent that if even a single dose of Advantix is eaten by a cat it is sadly very likely that the cat will perish.

This means that you need to be responsible when it comes to owning and using Advantix – it’s a very powerful and focused treatment that needs to be respected.

Due to the severe toxicity of permethrin towards cats it’s recommended with Advantix that you keep your dog separate from any house cats for 24 hours. This is just in case any contact or grooming occurs which could cause the cat to ingest or take on any of the Advantix product.

Pyriproxyfen

Moving on we come to this pesticide which is somewhat less widespread than the above.

Pyriproxyfen is an IGR – an insect growth regulator. This works against fleas by a clever mechanism which looks the same as flea hormones in juvenile fleas.

This means that the fleas will never reach maturity and will instead stay in the larvae form. This stops the life cycle of the flea in its tracks and ceases any further infestation.

How is Advantix dosed?

The dose for Advantix will vary depending on the weight of your dog. The easiest way to work this out is to simply pick up your dog and stand on the scales with it.

You can then work out the difference by weighing yourself and working out the difference. It’s a little easier than shoving a dog around a room to try and get it to sit still!

Dosing methods

Let’s break down the method for using Advantix step by step. It’s good to stick to these rigorously as you’re dealing with a powerful product here.

•You’ll obviously want to take out the appropriately sized tube from the pack first
•The lid comes off the tube with a simple twist after which you want to turn the lid upside down and place it back in the tube
•Twist and then pull on the lid which takes the stopper out
•You can then calm your dog down enough that you can part its fur. It’s best to do this at any spot that’s possible within the area of the shoulder blades
•You can then start putting single drops of the product in a line that runs further down the dog’s back to ensure even coverage

There’s an important note to make here in that you want to avoid rubbing the Advantix flea and tick into the skin of our dog. You also need to wash your hands immediately afterwards.

Advantix II Review

So what did we actually think of the Advantix 2 flea meds?

We think it’s the bee’s dog’s knees.

After using the flea drops for a month, we had no side effects, no nasty odors, and best of all, no fleas!

See how Advantix II compares against Frontline Plus and Advantage II

Pros

• It works. That’s the biggest point, right? We have yet to see a flea since using Advantix
• It’s cost effective. If you buy the 6 month supply, it comes out to around $10/mo. Trust me, getting rid of fleas costs way more than that in sprays, vet visits, and stress therapy. This is one of those “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” scenarios
• No smell. I’ve got a fairly sensitive nose and there have been a few flea med brands in the past that I could definitely smell. One seemed to last for weeks! So far, I haven’t whiffed anything chemical-esque.

Cons

• I’ve heard others report that the K9 Advantix II causes their dog’s hair to fall out or can irritate their skin. This didn’t happen to us but it’s worth noting.
• Other people have mentioned that after applying the flea drops, that their pooch started acting funny, kind of like it was drunk. Again, this didn’t happen with our fur baby but it has happened to others.
• I have a friend in South Carolina that swears that the Advantix doesn’t work on whatever super fleas they have up there.
• It does contain chemicals. If you’re the type of pet parent who only feeds your little one all natural food and doesn’t like using products with man-made materials, this isn’t the flea treatment for you. Instead, check out these natural flea treatment options.

Advantix compared – how does it rank up against other similar products?

We’ve gone over the details of Advantix II for dogs. You now know how to apply it and how it works as well as being aware of a few key safety tips to help keep your pets happy.

Let’s now go over the competition. We will go over a list of different products that try to match Advantix and we’ll list their pros and cons.

You have a wide range of products to choose from when it comes to medication and treatment for things like fleas. We’d recommend that you mainly refer to the ingredients in these products to see what the mix and quality is – there’s a lot out there with fluff and filler instead of the best and most powerful pesticides and insecticides.

Frontline Plus Flea and Tick Control

This is one of the biggest questions usually asked. Frontline Plus is the biggest product in this area and Advantix is the David to this Goliath.

It’s an incredibly common question to the point where it merits its own article in full. The main difference here is that in Frontline the biggest active ingredients are two specific items: fipronil and s-methroprene.

Fipronil is a big player in the insecticide game that makes a good comparison against Advantix’s key ingredient imidacloprid.

So what’s different between these two products? The biggest point is that Frontline doesn’t contain permethrin.

The toxicity of the ingredients in Advantix to cats might make you want to look elsewhere if you aren’t happy to maintain strong enough security and safety measures.

These two products both need to be dosed monthly. A key difference however is that Advantix can be used at seven weeks old whereas Frontline isn’t recommended to be used on a dog younger than eight weeks. That window of time can mean a lot if you see your young pet in distress!

If your dog is less than 8 weeks old, check out this post on flea medication for puppies.

Advantage II

This is a product produced in advance of the release of Advantix. It’s quite similar in terms of its ingredients or contents in that it contains imidacloprid. It also contains the IGR we mentioned above called pyriproxyfen.

The long and short of the Advantage 2 flea drops is that it has the same parts as Advantix 2 for dogs but it won’t help protect your pet against mosquitoes. The flipside of this is that it won’t pose any danger to your cats in any way, so if the mosquito side isn’t a problem and you have house cats then this might be a consideration for you.

It’s also a little cheaper if your funds are tight when it comes to pet treatment.

Fiproguard MAX

This one is based around its insecticide content and is used in a topical manner similar to Advantix but contains some other key ingredients such as cyphenothrin.

This is a capable product but a point to note is that it doesn’t put a stop in the flea life cycle similar to the above products and as such works quite differently.

A key thing to note here is that you can’t use Fiproguard on a dog that’s younger than twelve weeks.

That’s a more significant gap than that we mentioned above and might rule the product out for you if you have a young dog. It might be the case that K9 Advantix II is better.

Bio Spot Active Care

This is another spot on treatment and has an interesting blend of ingredients to help it accomplish its purpose.

The full rundown of Bio Spot is the following: etofenprox, s-methoprene, piperonyl butoxide, IGR pyriproxyfen, n-octyl bicycloheptene dicarboximide.

Jeez! That’s again a lot of scientific names but the main boast Bio Spot makes is that this blend means it has all the power of Advantix and its ability to fight mosquitoes without it being toxic to house cats.

That’s an impressive claim however it’s not all good news unfortunately. Bio Spot can be seen online to have low review scores and isn’t as popular as the other heavy hitters like Advantix.

What Do Other People Think?

The good news in this respect is that there’s such a large number of reviews on the big sites like Amazon that you are ruling out the wildcards and poor quality ones that can skew product ratings.

Advantix II for dogs has well in excess of two thousand reviews on Amazon so you’re in good hands with an average review score.

Wrap Up

So we’ve gone over some of the best in the business and how Advantix matches up with them. It’s fair to say it’s a great product but this area of medication has some considerations to keep in mind.

It comes down to your situation. What is the breed and weight of your dog and how old is it?

It might be the case that you have a very young dog and you of course can’t bear to see it suffering from a flea infestation. In that case you might be well off with a product that is safe to use on older dogs.

Or it could be the case that your area has a high amount of mosquitoes and as such you need a combination product that can take care of that.

Ultimately if you are in a place where you need something as soon as possible but you have a choice we recommend looking to the reviews.

A great draw for k9 Advantix II is that it has a good set of minimum requirements in terms of dog age and a great range of ingredients to make it work. It’s critically heavily reviewed on sites such as Amazon and over thousands of individual accounts still comes out on top.

If you need something in a pinch and don’t want to risk quality we recommend it without hesitation – so long as it meets your needs.