Spring Tune Up for Your Dog

Marty and Laura get you and your buddy off the couch and ready for the spring weather.

"The most important thing is to not overdo it because the tendency is it's finally spring, it's finally nice out. I'm going to go garden all day, I'm going to go on a long hike, I'm going to cut the grass, I'm going to clean the garage, I'm going to do all this stuff that turns out to not really be conducive to not being physically conditioned for it. And it could be you, it could be your dogs," Marty advises.

Laura observes that many of us, and our pets, have to ease into that spring training.

"When you Netflix through the winter, you can't just marathon into the spring," Laura notes.

"We talked back a month or two ago about pests and bugs and critters and all that, but there's different ones in the spring and different things that we need to do for our pets in the spring than during the rest of the time," Marty says.

"We really can't just go out and get the deep woods OFF with the deet and it and spray it on our dogs because that's not safe for them," Marty says. "So if we're looking at what we want to do for preventives for protection, there's some pretty nice sprays out there. Sprays and the topical flea and tick medications often do offer repellency effect. The Vectra 3D has a wonderful effect of repellency. It has three different chemicals in it that protect your pet.

"One of them creates this hot foot effect so that if the pests land on your pet, they are not going to stay on because it's uncomfortable for them. Like they start dancing around and they're off. So there's some really good products out there. So the pills, like Bravecto, Simperica and Nexgard do a good job of killing fleas and ticks once they're attached or bite you. They don't do anything for repellency."

The Marty & Laura Show is produced by Pure Dog Talk Inc., with sound design and editing by Premium Audio Services.