Hi!

I have a new query.  My 10 month old Retriever bitch is just finishing her first season and I have begun to notice her scratching her belly in the last three or four days.  I have looked through her coat and there is some dandruff there but otherwise it is clear and very healthy looking with no lesions or soreness.  I raked the coat backwards and disturbed quite a lot of flaky skin.  I recently changed her onto Burns fish and brown rice (very gradually) with Burn's fortified food as a supplement as recommended, but as she is scratching i thought I had better change now to chicken and brown rice in case she had an intolerance to fish and did that two days ago, still Burn's though.  I have been reading this evening that some people treat their bitches for dry skin after seasons, I had never heard of this before.  It is most unlikely that she has mites or fleas as we have pale colour Siamese cats who wear flea collars and a very pale fawn short haired Lurcher, and I am certain that we would see evidence of little visitors on them too.  She hasn't been anywhere but around local roads for the last three weeks on lead, and as it is winter she only uses the garden to relieve herself as it resembles a recently used and rained on rugby pitch, so I don't think she can have picked up mites.  She is not scratching relentlessly but it has become noticable as she only did this before around her collar area when it was put on or changed.  She has no hair loss.

Has anyone got any experience of this sort of thing?  If so what remedies do they use?  As there is nothing to see I am reluctant to trapse to the vet yet when I believe it very probably will result in no conclusive evidence.

I cant relate to the season thing as i have a dog but he was on burns fish and rice for about amonth and his skin was itchy and also had alot of dandruff,i have now changed him to autarky and his skin and coat are healthy.

Hi -

Try rubbing some aloe vera gel onto the dry/itchy patches every day for a week and see if that helps.  If it truly is an allergic reaction it might get better while you do this but worse again when you stop the aloe vera. 

I would also treat her and your other dog for fleas, just to rule that out.  (Left the cats out there because you said they wear flea collars.)

If there is no improvement after switching to the Burns chicken and rice, I'd either try a 2kg bag of James Wellbeloved or I'd go to the vet and ask for a York blood test, which should come back with a readout of all ingredients she is allergic to. 

It may not actually be a food allergy but could be related to something else - for eg - have you changed your washing powder recently?