Question by Pug?Bug: Has anyone else had to give their dog a chemical bath to clear demodex mites?
My poor little guy is one year old and is suffering quite badly with demodex mites.

Skin scrapings and testing has shown a high level of mites as well as a yeast and bacterial infection. He has been undergoing a course of treatment over the past few months which has helped his symptoms – but not cured them. The bacterial infection and yeast infection has cleared but the mites remain!

My vet thinks the underlying cause of it may be an allergy. However, he wants to treat the mite problem first to make the dog more comfortable and to see if the problem could just purely be the mites before we start the costly process of testing for allergies/diet testing.

To treat the mites, my vet gave ‘advocate’ as treatment. This was supposed to clear the mite problem up with 4 uses (one pipette a month). We are onto the last pipette now and while he does not scratch/lick/bite himself as often, at times he still appears uncomfortable. At my last visit to the vet, the mite number had dramatically reduced, but he still had live mites on his body and so the vet mentioned that our other option could be a chemical bath. He is reluctant to give my dog this treatment as it can often have horrible side effects for the dog. Has anyone else used this method of treatment? If so, did it work? did it effect the dog badly? did it prevent the problem from returning?

We are back at the vet in the morning for another skin scraping to look at the number of mites on his skin and discuss where to go from here, just wanted to hear from first hand experience what this ‘chemical bath’ was like.
My vet will be the one giving my dog the first bath. He wants me to stay at the surgery with him while he washes the dog to show me how to do it properly and how much to use. He said he will make up a solution in bottles for me to take home which will be safe to put straight on without me having to add water etc. He has checked with the manufacturer of the product that it is safe for use on pugs as he knows the treatment can’t be used on chihuahuas (I don’t know why?!?) Apparently I will have to wash him every 2 weeks for 2 months with it?

Best answer:

Answer by Infinitely Superior
DIPS DON’T FREAKING WORK!!!
Ivomec,though not “labeled for use” in dogs DOES!

What do you think? Answer below!

Question by the sun will come out tomorrow: Dog in possible distress? Is there something the owners and their vet might be missing? Or refusing to see?
This dog is a playmate of my dog and she seems to have a lot of issues. I know the dog came from a Backyard Breeder and I don’t think the breeder ever even saw the father dog. She sent her female to be mated with this male. But my friends have learned a valuable lesson about bybs and puppymills through this dog. This dog though is maybe 1 or 2 years old I’d be surprised if she is any older and she is some sort of small breed. Poodle or Bichon Friese or Maltese or Westie. Its a little white dog, I’m not good at keeping those small breeds straight.

The dog when she is at play she can’t seem to keep up with the other dogs. She wears out in the first 10 minutes of play. The dog is constantly panting even when not at play. We are talking that this dog pants most of the day active or inactive. The dog chokes and coughs a lot when running and sometimes even more so when resting. I dog sat this dog last weekend and the dog in the middle of the night would wake up having severe coughing fits. I gave the dog her allergy medicine as instructed by the owner but it did nothing for the dog. The owner said she is being treated for some sort of allergies. She is on a very special diet due to allergies. So she has food and breathing allergies they say. She gets very nervous when left alone and so she is on some sort of sedative or anti anxiety medicine as well, the vet is treating her for some sort of anxiety. I had no idea the dog had this many problems but I keep seeing that something else isn’t right with this dog and I can’t put my finger on it.

Why would a dog this young have so many problems running and playing, especially when the weather isn’t hot. Why would this dog constantly pant? Why would this dog wake up coughing at all hours of the night and start coughing really hard when she is at play? And when you pick her up her heart always feels like it is trying to beat right out of her chest.

I’m thinking something is wrong and they and the vet haven’t caught it or something like that?

Could something else be wrong? What does it sound like? I just can’t put my finger on it but I think this dog needs to be checked out further.
What should I say to the owners? I know something else isn’t right with their dog. I’m to watch her again this weekend. They are possibly moving out of state, job interview and they are going back down there to house hunt. I just can’t let this dog move away possible really sick and not say anything

Best answer:

Answer by mauveme49
You could suggest they get another vet to give them a second opinion. Other than that there is not alot you can do.

What do you think? Answer below!

Question by Poodles NOT Doodles!: Anyone experienced this with their dog?
Now I’ll prefix this with- This dog is being treated by a vet already.

That’s out of the way! So we have this dog at our shelter, he’s a little Pekingese who was found abandoned in an apartment with just an open bag of food and by the time we found him, no water to speak of. Needless to say he was in very rough shape.

However, he looked like a hairless Chinese Crested with the way his hair was! He had no hair at all on his back and halfway down his legs. He also had none on his face. It was all red and oozy and disgusting. He was on some serious meds for about a month to try and get him better. Along with this he was very greasy and itchy.

So…about a month to two months ago he was started on prednizone 1x a day. WHAT a difference, his hair immediately started growing back within days. The greasiness went away and he was not itching at all (clearly prednizone is a miracle drug). So we started to ween him off it, and we immediately noticed a difference. He was itchy again and very smelly and greasy. He can’t live on prednisone so it’s not really an option to just leave him on it.

We have tried ruling out food allergies. He was on Fromm’s Whitefish and Potato formula for about a month or so. And now he is on Hills Z/D. No improvement noted with either of these. We are now trying different fabrics, he is on an ‘all fleece’ bedding restriction for three weeks to see if maybe he has cloth sensitivity.

But to be perfectly honest, we’re running out of ideas! It seems very unlikely that he has food allergies and allergy testing is expensive so it’s kind of a last option. It seems everytime he looks a little better the next day he looks ten times worse. Today when we went in he had rubbed off an entire patch of his hair on his back just during the night. He is in so much pain! He is a wonderful sweet little guy so we obviously don’t want to euthanize him. So I thought I would reach out to some people on here to see if they had ever encountered something like this or if they had any other suggestions. (Sorry this was so long!)
Thanks BYB’s, I’ll look into that!

It’s unlikely to be mange. Even if he hadn’t been skin scraped, it’s not classic demodex and sarcoptic would have transferred to other dogs housed in the same area as him. The only thing I can find online would be a yeast skin infection, but he’s been on Cephalexin twice now, which as far as I know should have cleared that up.

Best answer:

Answer by Cassie-Dane & Bully Breed lover
one of our fosters has an issue like that with an olde english bulldog.

I suggested raw feeding to her, and she is going to try it out.

also, could it be mange? since he is seeing a vet then I doubt that that wouldnt have already ruled that out, but just a thought

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Question by Effi: nature diet sensitive salmon & prawn dogfood. anyone else experience problems when feeding their dog this?
hi everyone. i have a bit of a strange question. my dog (english bull terrier cross) has food and skin allergy issues and we usually feed him james wellbeloved dry kibble in white fish and rice. he has always been fine on this but we wanted to try him on a wet food as he was starting to chew himself on his paws again and the cone has had to come back out, much to our dismay
we are now giving him james wellbeloved dry on a morning and nature diet salmon and prawn for sensitive tummies (which is 60% meat guaranteed) on an evening but since changing him onto this (only around 2 weeks ago) i have noticed when i’m doing the dog poo pick up in my garden that his poos arent as solid and look like they are made up of a browny-phlegmy jelly type substance mixed in with his normal looking poo, at first i thought it was slugs on his poo but on closer inspection it is clearly his poo, no slug! i have become concerned as today i found what looked like fresh blood in the jellyish poo too. now i dont know if this could be down to his food not agreeing with him or more problems! i’ve had his urine dipped in the last 6 months and it showed all his vital organs are working fine but obviously its a worry! has anyone else experienced problems like this with this food or do you think its vet visiting time? i have a 6 m.o staffy cross puppy too and her poos havent been as solid either but i just put this change down to them getting used to the food. if someone could give me some advice that would be great because i love my doggies and dont want to make them suffer any longer if something is up! thanks for reading and all advice will be greatly recieved

Best answer:

Answer by ms manners
I think that if you know your dog has food allergies, its a bad idea to add more and varied food items to his diet. Usually you want to eliminate items, to make it easier to determine what the allergy is.

If you want him to have a wet food, EVO makes a canned food that is 95% meat, and offers unusual proteins like venison (I dont know if EVO is available where you live).

Has your vet done any testing to find out what your dogs allergies are?

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Question by Faith: Anyone here allergic to their dog?Any advice?
My son who is 3 has had eczema since he was a baby.He sees a dermatologist and recieves treatment and his skin is well moisturised.He had a blood test and it was positive with dog allergy although his main problem was house dust mite and we have taken lots of steps to reduce the dust in our home.We have a dog and I am wondering how much she is adding to his troubles.I bathe her weekly and groom her,keep her bedding clean I started using a product last week you rub into the coat to reduce the allergens coming from her.Any other ideas I can try?We would hate to part with her I’m not sure how much difference it would make to his skin and I would hope to avoid parting with her she’s part of the family.

Best answer:

Answer by Brittany Gibson
i have the same problem on me in the winter. my skin cracks up and everything, the dog is probally a problem the more the fur the more of the allergies and that will cause the eczema to start back up if you want to keep the dog keep him but get him shaved often. hope this helps.

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