Where do I start, well first things are first i am not the brightest person to have cancelled my pet insurance and popped it into my saving account for 3 years as the money is now spent so i will learn from that one.

Anyway I have a 12 month old shih tzu who is allergic to rice and wheat and has really bad skin... I had read up about mange etc but the vet said no just a reaction so he was put on steroids and antibotics for a few weeks seem to go away so reduced the dose and it came back. spent £350 on an allergy test at york test and came back as allergic to rice and wheat we had been feeding him on burns brown rice and lamb... so we swoped him to SD as advised from the VET with six week course of antibiotic all going weel for the first few weeks and then back again he is red under his chin on his ledgs and his paws swell up bleed and crusted he has difficulty walking so back to the vets after the course ran out and she now thinks he may have an auto-immune issue and demodex mange so wants to do a biopisy and a skin scrap which is what i had asked for to start with but was advised it wasn't that issue. during this time we have been bathing him twice a week in malaseb shampoo.. can anyone shed any light on this issue? the cost of the treatment is not an issue, I just dont want the poor fella to be in anymore pain. The vet assures me that these final test will identify the course of the issue? I have since finished the bag of SD and put him back on burns but the pork and potatoe due to his allergies. He was out of a litter of five and the only one to have had a problem the only other issue he had was puppy strangles when he was about 7 weeks old. any help or advice would be great...

would any of you suggest I ask the vet if we can try Advocate before doing the skin scrap and bi-opisy?

our dog had demodex and the first thing they did was the skin scrape. It only takes a second to do and they look at it under the microscopr to see how many mites are in the area. If that is what the problem is, they will do a course of baths (all vets are different and may have other methods). I didnt want to do the 12 weeks baths of Aludex, so I suggested Advocate, and my suggestion was shot down. But I do know of someone who did use advocate for demodex and it cleared up. I was insured so I think the vet wanted to do the 12 weeks because obviously he gets more money.

If I was you to eliminate the possibility of mange, get the skin scrape done. You dont want to give medication that he might not need.

We then had the same probelm as you, but after the skin scrape. Once the baths were done and the mange went away. He began to itch and have pustules on his belly. After weeks of antibiotics, and hibitane baths, and maleseb baths. We wanted allergy tests done ages before, but the vet wanted to do a process of elimination starting with antibiotics...anyways finally we got the allergy tests done, he is allergic to dust mites and storage mites. Storage mites live in all cereal based dry dog feeds. We thought about switching to RAW for a while. So we did. And he is like a different dog. Shiny coat, not shedding as much, he gained muscle, his poos are small and solid. I dont know how you feel about RAW? But it might be worth a shot. No rice or wheat there.

I hope this helped. But if you feel the need, seek out a second opinion.

oh by the way...after his allergies were diagnosed. They strongly suggested we did the immunotherapy to desensitise him for the allergy. Also suggested meds to control the allergy. But we felt we wanted to try and control it ourselves. Cleaning daily, dusting etc etc, and the food swap. He has been great. I didnt want to pump him full of more vaccines and wear his immune system down some more

Thanks very much for the advice. The vet said I dont need the injections for him as he is allergic to food and not enviroment. she suggest he may have a auto-immune I have also been reading around the forums etc and he was on steroids when he was a pup for puppy strangles this could have weakend the immune system enough for the mite to take hold. The vet has said they want to do a skin biopisy to go deep and he will need to go under general anastic for this excuse the spelling please.... and be on a drip during it. and the results will take a couple of weeks to come back etc. I susspected he had demodex at the beginning and feel i should have pushed the vet for the test in the beginning just the same as i knew his puppy strangles weren't a reaction to something he had eaten (the internet is marvelous). I should really change to another vet but mine is the hospital and the others are not much better. I spoke to her last night and suggest we start treatment while test are being done even if it just cools his skin down as he is so red and sore. she says yes and then when i advised if i could have a prescription so i could buy off line she changed her mind and said best wait for the test results....

Sometimes vets tick me off. I am sure we all had one that did.
I hope your little guy feels better soon.
Good luck!

our dog had a skin problem and a skin scrape was needed, demodex was diagnosed and we was given advocate, it soon cleared up and she has the drops every month and we have never had the problem reoccur,