Skin condition - would love your advice pls x

T

Twinkletoes

Well-Known Member
Joined
8 February 2007
Messages
1,107
Location
Cornwall
Visit site
Hi All

I have 2 fantastic Border Terrier X's - both rescued by us as puppies. (One Patterdale x Border - great worker, & eternally grateful for being on this planet - One Border x Daschaund lol, a star, but highly sensitive both emotionally and physically).
The latter, has a heart murmour, nothing major, but as he's only 3 and we got him at 10 weeks its something we've been aware of incase it escalates at all, which it hasnt. He also has a skin condition, the point I am actually trying to get to without rambling on for too long about how fantastic these boys are :

We see the vet regularly for check ups, and they are great, but have run out of options for him hence why I need some advice :

His skin is Extremely dry, cracked heels, in his ears, on his tummy etc and if he gets the slightest graze or cut it flares up, and he (as he is currently) ends up on steroid cream and antibiotics which cures him within a few days but obviously is not a nice long term option for the littlle chap.
He is clipped which helps him stay cool and also enables us to see any skin flaring at the earliest stage. He is bathed regularly in a special wash (cant remember the vets term for it) and we use non bio sensitive washing powder on his towels/beds/toys.

Feed wise the Only thing that doesnt exascerbate things is James Wellbeloved, we have tried so many. That or Royal Canin Sensitive but there's not a lot in it and he likes the taste of the JW better hehe.

Tablet wise the vets prescribed him the canine equiv of Piriton, which has had no effect, and apparently only works in 15% of dogs according to our vet.
Skin cream wise he's had Camrosa ointment and Wonder Gel (use on my horses, its Amazing) and various others but these although they stop the problem getting worse, do not help clear the condition.

If any of you have had similar experiences and have had any success with a particular product/action, I would be very grateful for your feedback.


xx
 
Ben, our Border Terrier has an allergy to hay, straw etc, very handy here!

He gets rashes and makes it worse by dragging himself along the ground rubbing his tummy and inside legs raw and calloused. After a lot of trial and error, we have found sulphur tablets to be the answer, they are meant to clean the system which they seem to do. He only gets them if he starts rubbing, not as a daily thing in case he gets immune to them and then we'd be up a creek without a paddle! They are from the herbal shelf at the chemists, tiny little things and we wrap them in his favourite food of all time, cheese so never a problem to take them. You can also get rock sulphur from a pet shop to keep in the drinking water bowl so that it is continually in the system. It's an old and cheap remedy that works for Ben, it's not to say it will work for yours but it's got to be worth a try I would have thought.
 
Ah, thank you for advice so far. We are willing to give anything a try for Bear, and we try each thing for a good few weeks to ensure gets in the system etc. Will keep you posted. x
 
I think that it must be a border terrier problem because one of our bitches is the same but she is controlled on piriton tablets when she needs them. I hope that you find an answer for him.
 
I would suggest Nutro Choice Dog food for your boy... you should see a HUGE change in his skin within 4weeks of feeding.... PM me if you would like further details. xxx
 
The easiest and cheapest thing to check for your dog is food intolerance. As a nutrition advisor for dogs and cats, I meet a lot of dogs with similar symptons to yours.

At the moment you are feeding a wheat gluten free food (James Wellbeloved), without knowing exactly which flavour you are feeding I cannot tell if your dog is having any gluten in his food, check the bag ingredients, after wheat, barley, oats and maize all have gluten in them, and many dogs cannot tolerate this, which manifests itself in skin and dietary problems. The only food I know has NO gluten in it is Oscar, check out the website www.oscars.co.uk, you will see if you click on the pink bag (under Dog) that all of the ingredients are listed. I don't know anything about Nutro CHoice but if you google it you will surely find the website and all the information on ingredients you require. If you do decide to do a food trial, I would suggest totally gluten free for at least four weeks, that means no corner of toast or digestive biscuits, lay off ALL treats unless you can be completely sure they have no gluten in them, and keep a diary of your dogs condition. With regards to expense, JWB retails at £37.99 for a 15Kg bag, and the completely gluten free Oscar is £34.95 (you may find another product which is cheaper and suits your dog).

If you need more help/info, do get in touch.

Sorry this is so long winded, but I see so many dogs with terrible skin problems, and veryoften if can be easily controlled, remember whilst Vets certainly know their stuff, they aren't necessarily trained up to date in nutrition, and after all, it is their job to sell you stuff!
 
[ QUOTE ]
The easiest and cheapest thing to check for your dog is food intolerance. As a nutrition advisor for dogs and cats, I meet a lot of dogs with similar symptons to yours.

At the moment you are feeding a wheat gluten free food (James Wellbeloved), without knowing exactly which flavour you are feeding I cannot tell if your dog is having any gluten in his food, check the bag ingredients, after wheat, barley, oats and maize all have gluten in them, and many dogs cannot tolerate this, which manifests itself in skin and dietary problems. The only food I know has NO gluten in it is Oscar, check out the website www.oscars.co.uk, you will see if you click on the pink bag (under Dog) that all of the ingredients are listed. I don't know anything about Nutro CHoice but if you google it you will surely find the website and all the information on ingredients you require. If you do decide to do a food trial, I would suggest totally gluten free for at least four weeks, that means no corner of toast or digestive biscuits, lay off ALL treats unless you can be completely sure they have no gluten in them, and keep a diary of your dogs condition. With regards to expense, JWB retails at £37.99 for a 15Kg bag, and the completely gluten free Oscar is £34.95 (you may find another product which is cheaper and suits your dog).

If you need more help/info, do get in touch.

Sorry this is so long winded, but I see so many dogs with terrible skin problems, and veryoften if can be easily controlled, remember whilst Vets certainly know their stuff, they aren't necessarily trained up to date in nutrition, and after all, it is their job to sell you stuff!

[/ QUOTE ]Hmm I didn't want to go into a long winded reply... so will try and keep this short and sweet...

If you look on the back of 99% of the packets of dried dog food e.g Burns/JWB/Pedigree/Bakers/Pro Plan etc etc you will find that all of them mention 1) Animal derivatives... basically they contain very little pure meat.. the derivatives will included spinal chords/brains/heads/feather/feet/or 'meal' the intestines.

You will also notice that if the 1st ingredient is not animal derivative it will be some form of cereal, be it maize/oats/barely/rice.. these are purely bulking agents and have no nutritional value, these are what in 99.9% of cases cause skin irritation.

Also alot of foods will state 27% chicken... this is weighed in it's wet state so once dried the product will actually only contain a third if not less actual chicken.

Nutro choice weigh their meat (no derivatives are used in Nutro) in it's dried state so what they say you get you get.... they also do not use cereals in their food as a bulking agent.

With regards to coats.. all dog foods must contain 1% oil (the name escapes me Lanoleic I think) for the coat/skin.. most companies use Omega 3 oil at 1% which is a less effective oil than the Lanowotsit which Nutro use at least 3.4% in their products.

I'm actually to tired to make much sense but I hope that makes some sense.... have a look at their website they will make more sense than me!!! http://www.nutro.co.uk/dogs.htm
 

Have you tried adding Evening Primrose Oil, I know someone whos dog suffered similar problems and they started to supplement their food with this and saw dramatic improvements.
 
Thanks for that KJFIT, I couldn't find the ingredients on the Nutro Choice website before, but have now!

Yes, I know exactly what you mean regarding the ingredients, and how words can be twisted, and some foods are terrible. Oscar only used human grade food, my husband has proved this on many occasions by eating it in front of customers to prove a point - also great if you have young kids that get into the dog food bag!!!
 
Has he had blood tests, intradermal skin tests etc? Some dogs are allergic to certain types of grasses, fleas, mites, and loads of other things? You dont say what tests hes had, just that vet has run out of options
 
[ QUOTE ]
Thanks for that KJFIT, I couldn't find the ingredients on the Nutro Choice website before, but have now!

Yes, I know exactly what you mean regarding the ingredients, and how words can be twisted, and some foods are terrible. Oscar only used human grade food, my husband has proved this on many occasions by eating it in front of customers to prove a point - also great if you have young kids that get into the dog food bag!!!

[/ QUOTE ]LOL - The Nutro Rep ate some of his product too!! It too only uses Meat fit for Human Consumption... hence no derivitives!!
smile.gif


P.S - the product looked v good.
I have looked at the Oscar product - infact spent a long while speaking with them at the South of England show this year.... so much so that they wanted to kidnap my dog, they loved him and he created such a stir that it bought loads more people over to the stand!! hehe (A great marketing tool my baby is!!
wink.gif
)
 
Well, I know what you are going through. We have Siberan Huskies and were at our wits end trying to get to the bottom of a skin complaint with one of them. She was in and out the vets, at the vet college and we tried every hypo-allergenic diet there is. She had blood tests, we treated them all for fleas...all to no avail. Huskies can be prone to being deficient is zinc and although she wasn't showing the classic symptoms of it, we gave her zinc tablets. Still nothing.

She was literally ripping her hair out and chewing her skin to leave huge open sores on her back. Steroids didn't help and the only thing that stopped the injury she was causing was a buster collar. It wasn't boredom, we work ours in harness regularly and they live in a big outdoor run as a pack. It wasn't until we tried a different type of zinc that, touch wood, the problem has gone. She's on zincaderm, and double the dose at that.

Now, this is a breed specific problem so you would need to see if it's something that affects other breeds. I think it is. Yours doesn't have the classic symptoms but then, neither did mine!

I did research a lot though and I do believe that most skin issues are food intolerance. It might be worth trying an exclusion diet and that would mean feeding 'real food' and not Dog food. A controversial subject but it can be very effective. We still avoid giving ours any red meat as it always seemed to make her worse. Ours are all on Royal Canin 4300 but they do get raw meat as well from time to time. The Royal Canin hypo-allergenic did seem to help a wee bit and was the only food that did.

I hope you get to the bottom of it. You feel so helpless.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top