Please help - My 6 month old male Springer Spaniel has developed lots of spots mainly on his tummy and is almost constantly scratching/biting them. He has been like this for 2 months now.

The vet initially gave him a steroid injection and Cephalexin antibiotics but these did not help one bit. She then wanted to take 4 or 5 biopsies but I refused the surgery as it is only the 2nd time he's visited the vets. She has now given us Amoxycillin antibiotics, Hibiscrub wash and advocate spot-on (he was previously using Frontline). We thought it may have been a pollen allergy but the vet dismissed this because the steroid injection didn't work.

I am at my wits end having tried Aloe Vera and Tea Tree spray, nothing seems to be helping his constant scratching. For information, he is fed on Royal Canin

Steriods when used for allergic reations can help the symptoms - but does not always get rid of all of them, so it might be that his itching reduced but the spots remained.

It would be worth having an allergy test to find out if there are any allergies.  Also you could in the meantime try - keeping him off any grass (this could be the trigger) and changing his diet to a fish/chicken or lamb and rice based one. Burns, Nutro and Autarky are very good.

Def insist on the allegy test though.
Sharon

Perhaps changing his diet to an hypoallegenic diet may help.  Our dog has long-term skin problems, mainly confined to scratching his ears all the time despite there being no infection present according to our vet.  I have tried James wellbeloved lamb and rice and Naturediet lamb and rice and he is now on Wafcol salmon and potato because I thought maybe it could be rice that is causing his allergy.  We have had numerous steroids that didn't seem to work at all last time so we are now trying the new drug called Atopica (ciclosporin) which is better for him than steroids and doesn't do long-term damage like steroids does.  The down side is that they are very expensive.  Our dog has had them for 10 days now and he doesn't seem to be scratching as much as he did.  It takes 3 or 4 weeks to start working properly though and some people have had very good results with them :-)

Hope you find something that works soon :-)

HI

I heard this from somebody this morning when out on my walk with the dogs.  The background is that her dog (a springer!) was suffering terribly from grass mites and had an awful rash.  She had had the dog at the vet, like you, and had had all the usual treatment.  She then met an ex gamekeeper and, while talking, explained what was happening with her dog.  He to told her to sprinkle some yeast (normal breadmaking yeast) over their food.  She did this and it cleared up within days!!!

Now, I do not know how accurate this information is but, if it was my dog, I would certainly give it a try.  Don't sprinkle too much and try it for about a week I would think.

Maybe somebody will disagree - as I say this is what I heard this morning and her dogs looked absolutely fine.

Good luck

Annie

Another thing might be to try to find a local beekeeper (it has to be a local one though) and get some honey and give the dog a teaspoon of honey a day to try to desensitise him from the effects of the pollen.  I haven't tried this because we haven't any local beekeepers but a couple of people have suggested this to me :-)

HI Anna

Why does it have to be from a local beekeeper?  Does it have to be fresh or organic?  Would organic honey not to the same thing?  Just curious to know!

Kind wishes
Annie

Honey from local bees will be from the local plants that are causing a particular allergic reaction.
:)

Thanks Jeangenie :-) :-) :-)

Thanks guys.  I never thought about that but that makes perfect sense.  Us ex-townies you see honey is just honey to us!! :d :d

Kind wishes
Annie