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Labs are prone to all kinds of allergies. Food allergies typically manifest at around 18 months, but can develop at any time.
You can try a coal tar based shampoo like Lytar, Nusal-T or Medi Tar to help alleviate the symptom. Without knowing the cause it will be hard for anyone to offer much help.
I will be curious to see what your vet has to say. Please keep us updated.
Sometime switching from junk food to good food can be a blessing. Don't be dreading the issue, and if this is indeed food allergy, consider yourself lucky.
I think alot of skin issues are from what goes into a dog meaning diet and or over bathing a dog thus stripping the coat of its necessary oils. My first dog a cocker had major skin issues and spent her life on steroids , antibiotics and special shampoos with very little improvement. This was before the internet and my vet never suggested diet being the cause why should he as he was making lots of money? ( not the same vet I use now)
Then my parents had a dog with lupus that would pull his hair out once again steroids and antibiotics and special shampoos and creams with little improvement.
My own dogs now 11 and 12 have had beautiful healthy skin and coats their whole lives. This area is prone to what the vets call the Santa Barbara itch during the summer..never had it with these two. They get a great diet, lots of omega 3 oils from ground flax seed and fish oil, and the Missing Link mixed in. They get one maybe two baths a year and neither has any bad odor to their coats. If they go to the beach they just get rinsed with fresh water they do not get a bath! People always ask what I bathe them with their coats shine so much and I tell them its is not that as they have not had a bath in months it is diet. Even my vet asks how I keep their skin and coats so healthy!
Back to the dog with Lupus after my mom died I changed his diet to what my dogs get also adding virgin coconut oil .To stop the hair pulling and itching and even heal his nose lesion I had my dad spray him with Willards water twice a day and within months he was looking great. however all those years of steroids took a toll on him and had weakend his muscles and he got to the point where he could not stand up and at 100 lbs ( collie X malumute mix..big dog!) it was too difficult for my 83 yr old dad to manage getting him up and out he had to be put down but hey he died as a beautiful boy as his skin , nose and coat were looking great. The vet never even came close to having him look so good and that was with my parents spending tons of money.
Willards Water is non toxic and is great for any skin issues as it stops itching if you use it several times a day at first and mix it at a strength stronger then you do for drinking. With hot spots they tend to be dry by morning after being sprayed with it. Early infections improve within a few sprays . I use it myself on myself that is and have lots of friends using it on their dogs and themselves now and all have seen good results. The dogs and I even drink it everyday and after I wash my own face I spray it with the Willards water and let it dry and my skin has never looked better. I also just used it on a rash that I may have picked up at work, red itchey painful bumps sprayed it twice yesterday, once today and it is no longer itching and the bumps are smaller. Great on burns too! In the future I will always try it or recommed others to do so before trying steroids for such problems.
No one knows how the willards water works as all it does is change the molucular structure of water and it does change the PH to a more alkaline PH which is good with calcium oxolate stones and also seems to prevent urine burn of the grass. I will tell you me and dozens of my friends have become believers in it. Any of you read the whole dog journal they had an article on it and the guy told me he had lots of new orders from it.
Sometime switching from junk food to good food can be a blessing. Don't be dreading the issue, and if this is indeed food allergy, consider yourself lucky.
You never told us what you feeding your doggy ?
We're feeding him Purina One puppy formula. He was on Iams large breed puppy a while back, but it gave him horrible diarrhea (explosive). So, after a week of eating chicken and rice we slowly incorporated the Purina One into his diet, and he hasn't had any digestive issues since.
I agree with others who have replied recommending a visit to the Vet.
But after that, the first thing I would do is stop feeding processed food of any sort. If you go to this page, you will see why.
[URL="http://www.naturalnews.com/z012647.html"]The true horrors of pet food revealed: Prepare to be shocked by what goes into dog food and cat food[/URL]
In 2006 I changed my old dog to homemade food (actually, I started by just giving her the meat and vegetable part of whatever we were eating ourselves) because she had stopped eating her expensive "premium brand" dog food (specially formulated for senior dogs with skin problems). She was so miserable with her itchy skin, stiff joints, lame shoulder and general lack of energy, I was getting myself emotionally prepared to have her put down, and I reasoned that it didn't matter what she ate for the last few days of her life.
The change in her was pretty dramatic. Within six weeks she was no longer itchy or lame, stiffness was minimal and only in the mornings, and energy level was back to what I would call "enthusiastic" levels.
I still have her. She now eats mainly raw meat, cooked vegies and rice, yoghurt, cottage cheese, eggs, titbits of fresh fruit, and any table scraps that are suitable for a dog. She is now 16 years old. The constant itchy skin she had, which my vet said was contact dermatitis from plant material and wanted to treat with steroids (I would not let him because they affected her mentally, which he said was not possible) has completely gone and never occurs now. She's full of energy, has lustrous coat, and people do not believe her age!
I am a passionate convert to homemade dog food. Contrary to expectations, it is no more expensive than the high priced special formula I was feeding (on vet's advice), and not at all difficult.
If you do decide to give it a go, just change gradually over a period of several days, and only introduce one new food at a time. Don't accept advice from a vet who tells you to stick to a processed food.
If you do try it, I'd be interested to hear how you get on.
best of luck
If you look at the ingredients panel on the food you are feeding you will see corn gluten (the cause of all the contaminated dog food), wheat, and corn all in the first 5 ingredients. The other 2 are chicken (one of my dog's food allergies) and "by product meal"-by definition anything not suitable for human consumption, including cancerous tissue (not saying its there, but it could be).
I can walk you through the food trial if you want to give it a try.
Okay, so some of you were asking for updates, so here goes:
After getting bumped from our appointment last week, we finally got in today. All other aspects of Fez are healthy - eyes, ears, heart, respiration, etc. The vet checked his hair and skin and confirmed my suspicions - the most likely culprit is allergies. He elaborated that labs tend to be pretty susceptible to allergies, and typically they are either food related or from an inhaled source.
Just to be on the safe side and rule out other possiblities, he did a skin scraping to look for mites. There were none.
So, our short-term plan is to:
1. Wash him 2x a week with a medicated shampoo - Malaseb which has miconazole nitrate adn chlorhexidine gluconate as the active ingredients.
2. Spray him with Genesis topical spray, which has triamcinolone acetonide as its active ingredient. We have to start twice a day for a week, then once a day for a week, then every other day for a week.
3. Give him 50 mg of Benadryl before bed
4. And add fish oil in his food, starting w/4000 mg daily. If he tolerates it well (no diarrhea), then we're to up it to 7000 mg.
So, for now that's it. We're to follow up in 3 weeks, or sooner if his condition worsens. When I mentioned that we had recently moved, he focused in on that as a possible cause - just rustling up lots of dust/dust mites with packing and unpacking.
As far as the food situation, he did not seem to poo-poo Purina One. I asked about the corn and wheat gluten and he said that certain breeds are more susceptible to that, but labs are not as much. He said that people usually have more difficulty with gluten than dogs. The kind that we're feeding him is a lamb formula, there is no chicken in it. So for now, he's staying on it.
But, he's getting to the point where we're ready to do the switch to an adult food, so I plan on coming up with a plan with the vet on what to switch him to. He's already mentioned a Science Diet formula for sensitive skin, so that could be a possibility.
Sorry for such a long post, but I figured I'd be detailed in case anyone else is having the same issues. Thanks to everyone for their ideas and advice. Time to go spray the dog.
Thanks so much for the update! It sounds as if you've got a good plan to get Fez back on the road to wellness. Hope he continues to improve so you all have a chance to settle down and recover from your move.
1. Wash him 2x a week with a medicated shampoo - Malaseb which has miconazole nitrate adn chlorhexidine gluconate as the active ingredients.
Did vet recommend this? Washing your dog 2x a week can possibly worsen the conditions, as you eliminating natural oils in dog's skin. I was my dogs 2x a year!
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2. Spray him with Genesis topical spray, which has triamcinolone acetonide as its active ingredient. We have to start twice a day for a week, then once a day for a week, then every other day for a week.
I've never heard of this spray, i need to do some reading on it, so should you!
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3. Give him 50 mg of Benadryl before bed
Not a bad idea. I would start with 25
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4. And add fish oil in his food, starting w/4000 mg daily. If he tolerates it well (no diarrhea), then we're to up it to 7000 mg.
1000mg per 10lb of body weight. How much does your dog weigh?
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But, he's getting to the point where we're ready to do the switch to an adult food, so I plan on coming up with a plan with the vet on what to switch him to. He's already mentioned a Science Diet formula for sensitive skin, so that could be a possibility.
Of course he would recommend Science Diet! He's selling it, doesn't he?
You can try it, if your dog does good on it, than it's great. If not, i suggest to find something that not found in grocery store or vets office. In general, vets are not well educated on canine nutrition. They listen to commercial companies such as above and get their incentives by selling it to average Joe who has no clue what he's getting.
All in all, good luck and i'm glad you made a visit to a vet!
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Any of you read the whole dog journal they had an article on it and the guy told me he had lots of new orders from it.
balding dog -HELP
