Hi I hope that someone may be able to give me some advice regarding my GSDs (fifa) condition as the vet has now said that he is possibly the dog that he cant treat & ive got to think about his future, and hes a dermatologist with a vast amount of experience.
He has had these symptoms for nearly a year & hes only 16 months old. It started with a couple of rashes on his belly when he was very young that went with treatment & then at 5 months it came back and just got worse. We were under a different vet that didnt really help & we think he may have got mrsa at the vets which they have failed to mention on his records when they were sent to the new vets that we transferred to. But he is prone to get any bacterial infections. When we took him to this vet approx 4 months ago he had hardly any coat & his whole body was sore. He had to wear a elizabethan collar & tshirt to try to prevent him chewing holes in himself. On 1 occasion when he got his collar off he scrapped his head & face up & down a rendered wall & took layers of skin off because he was that irratated.
The new vets put him on steroids, antibiotics & royal canin food which cost £73 at vets & cheapest on internet £56 which last 2-3 weeks and after a month he looked better but soon became sore and the skin that had gone white again is now black,dry & flaking.
This has been going on now for so long it is causing a massive financial strain (hadnt got around to insurance when he got ill) & im constantly worried about him & as a mum to a 6 month old & 6 year old im finding it very hard to deal with.
Im hoping that someone may have some idea of the best way to deal with him as its really my last chance to try before i have to make a decision that is going to break my heart.
If you have any ideas or advice i would really appreciate your help. Thanks very much.

I would change him to 100 % raw meat and bones. Steroids isn't going to help a lot in the long run -I used to work for a vet who specialised in dogs with skin problems and her description of steroids was that it was like sweeping the problem under the carpet -it would stop the symptoms but do nothing to treat the cause. You've got nothing to lose and feeding raw may very well sort the problem out -and won't cost a lot either.

Hi Fifa's Mum
Sorry you are having such a hard time with Fifa at the moment.
I once had a GSD who lost all his coat from the back of his ears to his tail and was very itchy. We tried all sorts of things from shampoos, change of diet, flea and tick treatments, creams etc.... It went on for more than 2 years and he would scratch himself raw and bleeding with it. He was a castrated male and was 2 when it began. I had reached the point of taking him to be PTS to give him peace as he was so depressed and had no life in him he was suffering very badly, when I met someone (He was an elderly retired gamekeeper) in the park who had a similar expierience. He told me to feed nothing but a raw diet, NO treats at all unless 100% addative free. (I used to dry chicken and liver etc in the over till very very dry). Give him seaweed on his food once a day and put an old fashioned flea collar on him. I did as he said and within a month Kia had stopped scratching and biting, his coat was growing and he was a happy dog. The vet thinks he had a flea allergy and once it got into his skin it was hard to get out. I started doing it just before winter so at the fleas least active time and by the following summer he was a different dog. I kept him in a flea coller for the rest of his life and never let it "run out" changing it every 2 months. I have no idea why the flea treatments had not worked before...and to be honest had never seen a flea on him but whatever it worked and he lived his life out a happy boy. It may have been the change of diet or something else but once it started to work I would not change any of the treatment for fear of him regressing.
Hope you get to the bottm of it soon.
Aileen

I agree with what has been said change him to Raw meaty bones not necessarily the panacea of life but mauy help after a while. I will send  you a link but there is lots of info on here.
I do hope you find a soloution for him

100% agree with MarianneB and yes I am a raw feeder. I think you know exactly what you are giving them. It may not help but at least you have given it a try.

I do hope you find the answer.

have the doctors considered  Pemphigus Foliaceus http://www.marvistavet.com/html/body_pemphigus_foliaceus.html

more pics http://www.akitaclub.org/health/health/pemphigus1.html

picshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pemphigus

(put the pics up just to give you an idea of what it looks like ...I only know of this as a friends dog was recently diagnosed.)May be nothing like it, but couldnt not mention it.

Thanks very much for that. Ive got chicken wings & leg quarters he's had some & ox heart & tried him with a few little fishes & of course he loved them.
Do you know about how much he should have? I know it would depend on each dog but i dont want to starve him & if he could he'd just eat til he burst! He's about 33kg.
Also is it whole fish, including the head?
And how long should i give it a go for? The foods ive tried all say 3-8 weeks but suppose they would!!

Thanks and ill keep you posted!! Any other tips are more than welcome!!

Hi,
I went through something very similar with my beautiful GSD. She started off with tummy rashes as a pup which eventually was diagnosed as Demodex. She was shaved completely and treated with baths ( Aludex etc ) but it did not clear up. As she got older her immune system stopped working and she became allergic to most things including dust, grass and sometimes me. Diet made no difference at all.
She went back and forth to Bristol Vet. College where they dug around trying to find the demodex mite, but it was so deep in her body by then they could not be found and damage was being done to her internal organs. She lived on antibiotics as within 2 days of leaving them off she was covered in weeping sores.
She had a wonderful character and put up with it all. She was insured but I was still adding thousands each year to top this up, she cost around £8000 per year ( this is 10 years ago )
Eventually the vet told me that there was nothing else they could do and I felt that she had put up with so much it would be kinder to let her go. She was by this time 6 years old. On hind sight I wish I had not continued for so long as she didn't deserve to suffer for so long, it was just the hope that she could be cured. They even did skin scrapings which they turned into a vaccine and injected back into her to try to help her fight this.

I sincerely hope that this is not what you dear dog is suffering from, but if it is and your specialist feels that there is nothing more he can do, please consider what is best for her as this is my one big regret that maybe I kept her for so long because I couldn't bear to let go.
My thoughts and prayers are with you in the hope that he doesn't have this awful condition and that he can get better.( please give him a hug from me )

Its 1 thing that i was adamant it was, some kind of mange but he's had scrapings twice showing nothing & had numerous parasite injections & spot on treatments so the vet is confident its not parasites . But the info i have read they can be very hard to detect so it is still a possibility.
Sorry about your dog sue, i really hope i havent got to decide to let him go because while hes on his steriods he is still majority of the time like an energetic 1 year old so cant imagine taking him.
Thanks for telling me what happen to you and i will keep it in mind.

he's had scrapings twice showing nothing

My ( as then ) pup showed no mite in the scrapings , it wasn't until she was shaved all over that the lesions could be seen covering her. Even the harshest bathing ( Aludex twice a week at high strength) did not kill them. Most normal puppy Demodex clears up when they get a little older, I had a pup recently with it, but a couple of months of bathing and it was gone. The Demodex my GSD had became worse as she got older and caused the immune system to pack up.

I hope your pup does not have this as I really cannot stand the thought of anyone going through this nightmare, you would think in this day and age and the advancement of medicine that there would be an easy cure for this awful condition.
Please keep me informed and fingers crossed.

was reading about thornit and that it can be successful with extrme skin irritation that dont show up as anything. Does that ring any bells with anyone ?

Thanks very much for that. Ive got chicken wings & leg quarters he's had some & ox heart & tried him with a few little fishes & of course he loved them.
Do you know about how much he should have? I know it would depend on each dog but i dont want to starve him & if he could he'd just eat til he burst! He's about 33kg.
Also is it whole fish, including the head?
And how long should i give it a go for? The foods ive tried all say 3-8 weeks but suppose they would!!

For a Raw Meaty Bones Diet (RMB) you need to feed between 2% and 3% of predicted adult body weight per day. Yes whole fish including the head is a perfectly balanced RMB in its own right (as are whole wild rabbits...and whole poultry) Don't worry if he appears to eat more than the upper limit per day for a start...its because the carnivore stomach is like an accordian and can expand until contentedly full.....you may find at this point that he will begin to regulate his own intake and very often have a day where he's not hungry at all. Once steady on an RMB diet dogs seldom overeat. If he takes to it and enjoys it....then continue for life :)

I would recommend getting a copy of Tom Lonsdale's "Work Wonders" and having a look at www.rawmeatybones.com an RMB diet doesn't have to be complicated :)

Skin conditions are extremely distressing...there is a lot of evidence to suggest that they are made worse by annual boosters so if it were me I would elect not to let him have any more and take a look at The Canine Health Concern website http://www.canine-health-concern.org.uk/

You could also seek referral to a Homeopathic Vet....and approach the condition from all angles :)

3 lemons steeped overnight in boiled water and sprayed onto the skin may help to relieve itching...also you could add a few drops of Calendula Mother Tincture to the lemon water....Natures Antibacterial