A few months ago I decided to try Shoo!Tags for Archie and Lydia instead of using a topical flea treatment. I’ve never been fond of them, but after Lydia’s cancer diagnosis I’m trying even more to stay away from chemicals. The Shoo!Tag sounded good because it doesn’t involve any chemicals. It’s a little plastic tag with a magnetic strip on it that is supposed to set up a type of energy field that repels fleas and ticks. Sounds a little out there, huh? That’s what I thought. I bought it anyway, hoping it would work.
Well, so far I haven’t seen any fleas on my dogs this summer. I don’t know if I should attribute it to the Shoo!Tag or something else though. My dogs rarely go around other dogs and I don’t know what the flea population is like this summer here in Austin. It could just be that fleas aren’t all that bad. I honestly don’t know.
The woman who told me about the Shoo!Tag bought some for her dogs too, and she’s in the same boat. She’s seen a couple fleas, but hasn’t had to battle them like she has in the past. Last summer she used Fleabusters, so she wonders if some of that may still be working. She also has chickens that eat a lot of insects, which may be helping keep the number of fleas down.
So, the bottom line is that neither of us are all that certain what the reason is that we’re not seeing so many fleas this summer. It could be a combination of the Shoo!Tag and other factors – and if that’s the case, YAY!
I’m actually hopeful that what I’m seeing is the Shoo!Tag doing what it’s supposed to do. The idea of not having to use chemicals on my dogs lets me sleep just a little better. And with any luck, the fleas will stay away so all of us can sleep well at night!
Technorati Tags: Shoo!Tag, fleas, dogs, topical flea treatments
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
My name is Valerie. I used Shoo Tag for the first time starting in May. I never saw any ticks or fleas on my little female Yorkie, Thank God!!! The topical poisons burn and I even got sick when I came into contact with them. I hope that Archie and Lydia are doing better.
God Bless,
Valerie
I’m happy to hear the tag’s working for you too.
Lydia and Archie are doing great! Right now they’re barking at the mailman. lol
I bought the Shoo Tag but my dog chewed it up before I had a chance to see if it worked. Even with cutting the tag for the smaller dog she was able to reach it and chew on it. I have been using the frontline and my dog still has fleas. I want to try the shoo tag again but I am trying to figure out how to keep the dog from chewing the tag.
Kim
When the dogs are chewing the tags do what we do. Cut the tag size down and attach it to the inside of the collar with a couple of small electric ties. This works best with a nylon collar and you can push holes through the collar or just sew the tag on.
Please give it a try and see what happens…Russ
Kim,
Please call us at the office 512-382-6864 and we will send you a free tag. Thank you for trying our product and posting your situation so we may help you and your pet. Melissa
I bought the Shoo tag for Walter, my recent adopted Doxie. I had to put my 1st Doxie to sleep after she got sick x 3 with a blood disorder. I think it was caused from the poison I put on her neck every month to control the fleas. I was desperate for something non chemical to try and by gosh it has worked. Walter got fleas when he first came to me and now there are not even one. I love the shoo tag and will never put poison on my pet again!!!
I heard the Shoo!Tag can cause cancer.
Just about anything can supposedly cause cancer. I’d be interested in any scientific reports that talk about the Shoo Tag causing cancer though.
(full disclosure: I have not seen or handled one of these devices, and the only knowledge of them is what I have read online: however, I have helped decode the strips on a couple).
The cards claim to be chemical free. So they should be no more carcinogenic than a credit card.
The magstrip, paint, etc may not be good to chew, and I doubt they have been approved for use on chew toys, but I think people would have screamed by now if credit cards were particularly toxic.
The “active ingredient” is apparently the data on the magnetic strip. That data is not carcinogenic. It’s not harmful or even unpleasant, to *anything*.
And there’s the rub. Ones and zeroes are not harmful even to ticks or fleas. The data on the card is a few standard formatting characters, a few numbers, and the words “TICK” or “FLEA” respectively.
It stretches credulity that insects might be scared by their own names, written in English, encoded into a form of ASCII called DEC-SIXBIT, which is then recorded as three rows of magnetic dashes. That’s like saying “mix a ground magnet with your printer ink, print out the word ‘FLEA’, and tape the word to your pet’s collar, and it’ll ward them off”.
You could argue maybe the magic’s in the numbers I haven’t decoded yet. But if Mother Nature doesn’t read English, she sure as heck doesn’t read binary digits off magnetic strips at distances larger than the distances that WE can read magnetic strips from.
Magnetic field strength dies by the inverse square law, so on the far side of a cat – or even a centimetre away – .it causes no change in the magnetic field.
If there were any way at all that a creditcard could affect something at a greater distance than “touch”, you can bet that you’d be waving them instead of inserting or swiping them, and people wouldn’t have bothered investing money inventing RFID chips that CAN be read from a distance, and you’d need to carry your cards in a shielded wallet so thieves standing beside you in a crowd couldn’t read the data off them and clone them.
So, I think we can safely say the Shoo!Tag myth is busted. But probably safe to chew.
Checking around, creditcards (and so I assume also the shoo tag) are made of ABS. ABS seems pretty safe: it’s used for water pipes, baby cups, even in tattoo ink!
Not found anything on the other components though (magstrip, inks). And of course, chew toys don’t tend to be made of this stuff because jagged shards of hard plastic probably aren’t great for any pet.
@Therese: I’d be interested in any scientific reports that talk about the ShooTag doing anything at all. Any science behind ShooTag is strangely lacking. The garbled ‘explanations’ of how ShooTag works on the ShooTag site are far from science.
Hello all- Looking for some info, just saw the commerical on this product but is there one that works for mosquitos, ticks, chiggers, bascially all insects? Or does it just work for one insect? It appears as if it only works for one insect? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks all…