Hi.

I have a golden retriever and jack russell terrier. Recently I found a small puncture wound( or what looked like one anyway.) Since then I've found small rash type symptoms on her neck and shoulder bones (the retriever) and when I look at them closely they just seem to be as if the skin has been rubbed away. There is always a small clump of blood (or what looks like dried blood) hanging from the hair around the area and the area seems to be very sensitive and painful.

The areas are not easy to find and normally can only be spotted if i'm stroking the dogs thouroughly - in fact i only found them in the first place when brushing my dogs after a bath.

This has happened to both dogs in the last 24 hours and i've found numerous areas on both dogs like this.

I'm taking both dogs to the vet tomorrow but wondered if anyone knew what this was (just to relieve my mind tonight.)

any help or ideas would be appreciated.

thanks

amanda

could be flea bites , might be where theyre nipped each other and its turned into scabs, or an abscess , either way the vet should know. -good luck,

Just had an episode last month with my Maltese. She started scratching and she had scabs on her. My new vet (we recently moved to a new area) eliminated the possibility of fleas or ticks and put her on antibiotics and special shampoo for eczema. After a week she was still not better, he did one skin scraping and dismised mites and he put her on another course of antibiotics and Eukeneba dermatosis formula (FP) for skin allergies. By this time I was getting really frustrated with him as you can imagine. That's when the lady at the pet shop recommanded a vet skin specialist. Went through and immediately he picked up scarcoptic mites (sometimes it can take up to 10-15 skin scrapings to get the little buggers). After a special leave-in treatment the nasty things are gone.

The fact that both your dogs have it lead me to believe it may be mites. Also watch out if you get a rash (I ended up with quite a bad one - luckily these mites don't leave on human skin and they die off within a day or two). On dogs they particularly like the feet, ears, neck and their elbows. These mites actually dig little tunels into the skin causing pretty bad scabs.

Also, if your dogs' smell a bit off it's caused by the oil grands that go bananas from all the scrathing. Good luck!