How to Identify and Treat Dog Hot Spots

Poor poochie, something is not right and you don’t know what to do. Your furry friend has given to chewing on her paws or her back. At first you think it’s just an itch, or maybe fleas in the coat, but as the chewing and licking continues, it turns out to be something more: hot spots!

What exactly are hot spots? It’s a superficial inflammation and bacterial infection of the top layer of a dog’s skin and is quite common. The good thing is that it is treatable and preventable. Lets look at ways to treat this miserable condition but before we do, how do we know that this is a hot spot and not some other skin problem? Here are the most common symptoms:

· Licking, biting and chewing a spot on the skin endlessly.
· The spot suddenly increases in a matter of hours, sometimes with pus inside.
· The sore may sometimes begin to ooze.
· The hot spot loses hair.
· The sore smells funny.

For quick relief:

1. Trim the fur around the offending spot or sore. This exposes the sore to air which helps dry the area and help speed up healing.

2. Clean the area with a gentle antiseptic skin cleanser. If you have a vial of a good quality tea tree oil, put a drop into a cup of water and use this to cleanse the area. Tea tree oil is both an antiseptic and a soothing agent. You need only a bit of it in the water for it to work.

3. Apply a natural topical cream such as K9 KlearUp. This is an excellent pet skin care product which includes the ingredient Tepezcohuite, a natural healing extract from a tree that grows in Central America.

There is never a 100% way to prevent something, but if you employ the following, the odds are in your and your dog’s favor:

1.Diet.

This is the first area of defense. Make sure that the food you are feeding your dog is in fact full of nutrition and not just filler to make your dog feel full. Look for food that includes meats for proteins, veggies for enzymes and omega 3 fatty acids. Check the source of those ingredients (ground up chicken feet and feathers are not the best ingredients.

Increasingly pet owners are looking at raw pet food as an alternate diet. This is how animals eat in the wilds. This is how our pets would still be eating if they were not domesticated.

2. Environment:
Do you use chemical cleaning products? What do you wash your floors with? This is as much a concern for people as it is for dogs who lie on the floors where residue is left from the cleaning agent that we use. Look for cleaning products that have all natural ingredients. Be careful of the “green” imposters. Just because a product’s appearance has been redesigned to look eco friendly does not mean that it is.

One environmental issue we cannot do much about is that some dogs (and people) are susceptible to plant pollen at certain times of the year.

3. Unwelcome guests.
These are not the human guests. Our dog’s coats are a welcome “home” for such unwelcome guests as fleas, mites, ticks and other insects. Check for them often. Ticks especially can be more than just a nasty parasite - if not caught, it can be deadly.

4. Daily Brushing:
Grooming is at the core of good dog skin care. Daily brushing is the first step and is especially important if your dog has a long coat or lots of wrinkles, like a sharpei. Not only does this stimulate the skin glands and release oils for a smooth and shiny coat, but it also rids your dog of any debris she might have picked up while romping outside, including some of those pesky “guests” we talked about above.

Apply preventative measures. Take immediate action when a hot spot does appear.

Dog Skin Care begins with Good Dog Food

I’ve been reading a lot about dog skin care lately. What prompted my interest was a discussion that a group of us was having about our dogs and I was surprised at how many had dog skin problems. Dry flaky skin, itchy skin, rashes, hot spots, eczema, bug bites that just would not go away. Needless to say all these conditions make our doggies miserable. They tend to scratch at the offending spot if they can reach it with their paws, or bite at it especially if it happens to be on one of more of their paws, or even rub up against something if it’s an area that can’t be reached by paw or mouth to get some relief. Bald spots and open sores that are hard to heal are often the result.

In my business I call on pet retailers and the first thing I did the next day when I was on my rounds was to ask some of the owners of these stores if they had customers who came in with dog skin problems. Yes, apparently there are plenty of customers who come in looking for products that would relieve their pets of things that make them go itchy scratchy – not just dogs, but cats and even ferrets.

The first resource is diet. The preferred type of food that customers like to buy for their dogs is kibble followed by canned. In either case you really need to know what the ingredients are and what the source of those ingredients is. In an effort to keep prices down manufacturers take free rein with fillers such processed grains and ground up animal “produce” which can be anything from ground up chicken feathers to discarded offal. The operative objective is to give food to the animal that makes him feel full.

The problem with this process is that nutrients are sadly lacking. Just as it is important for us humans to eat nutritious foods so it is also with our pets. Poor diet is often the underlying cause of skin problems, dogs, cats and ferrets alike.

Granted, some of the major brands have been improving the nutrient value of the food they manufacture for our pets and have begun to market them as specialty items.

What I find most interesting however is the growth of boutique brand manufacturers. These tend to be small to medium companies. Their whole premise is to manufacture quality pet food that is high on nutrients and low on fillers. The ingredients are whole foods. They use real chicken or beef meat and put in vegetables for much needed enzymes. Some of the foods are fortified with additional vitamins. Omega 3 fatty acids are often mentioned in the ingredients list which helps to promote a soft and silky coat.

The boutique brand foods are higher priced. Pet store owners tell me that increasingly their customers are choosing to spend a few dollars more on quality pet food in exchange for a healthier pet. But it’s not always just the diet, sometimes its other things: fleas, environment, grooming and more. But feeding your dog a quality dog food is a good first step to good dog skin care.