Dogs and bad skin Blog #2

 

  Most dogs and skin allergies go hand in hand, and I'm not saying food related skin allergies I'm just talking in the general sense because roughly 95% of the time its never the food despite what people think but yes food and food brands do help but it will largely depend on the dog one what food and its brand will work. I do believe that the skin is at least number 2 on worst things to treat behind parasites in most cases. Skin allergies are much like respiratory allergies in human but dogs don't get it in the respiratory system they get it through their skin and in most cases, the outbreaks even if being on meds always happen after winter and very earlier spring or at least that's when I see it most at my hospital. The main cause of outbreaks would be pollen which is also the same for humans oddly enough, but not all dogs are the same some dogs don't have outbreaks and in turn don't need to be on the more "heavier" allergy meds, and then some dogs simply never come off them, which is rough on the owners part because if you have a dog that is over 60 pounds the meds he or she will need are not cheap, even at my hospital where we are cost effective. For the dogs that never seem to get off any sort of meds or injections even, they always have a harder time getting back to "normal" or in a state where they are comfortable and not due to medication intolerance but id say a good 60% of the time its usually due to the owners not "noticing" or they do notice but don't have the money to do much about it at that time, and then the other 40% is due to them having mange or some sort of infections which technically skin allergies are just an infection of the skin but there's obviously different severities and also the breed of dog and their color can also make a huge difference, for example if you do not want to deal with the worst possible case you probably shouldn't own a blue nose Pitbull or a blue merle Pitbull, because the blue merle generically is the weakest skin and Pitbull's as a whole are just notorious for bad skin as shown above (that picture is actually very very low in terms of severity).

Here is a better picture but id still say this is about a 7/10 on severity, I've definitely seen worse but to treat something like this it would take at least 4-6 months to be fully healed and then life time medication for the skin allergies to keep maintained because in the words of my doctor "I can not cure skin allergies, I can only maintain them" (Dr. MaryKate Burdick DVM)