Unraveling a multi-dog mystery (with lessons for every pet parent)

🐾 Get ready to tackle this itchy pet mystery with Dr. Alex answering a question sent in by listener Trish that addresses some really key pet-care pearls. From narrowing down the potential causes of any problem, the importance of making a proper diagnosis, through to when to seek the input from your veterinarian. This episode has something for every pet parent!

Check out The Dog Allergy Summit here - https://ourpetshealth.com/allergysummit

And the full show notes here - https://ourpetshealth.com/podcast/multiple-itchy-dogs

Love the show? Sharing this episode or leaving a review helps others know it's worth a listen! - https://ourpetshealth.com/review

Transcript

Dr. Alex:
If we don't know exactly what we're dealing with, if we're not making a specific diagnosis, then our ability to correct, prevent, treat the problem can be a real challenge.

voiceover:
Welcome to the Call the Vet Show. The podcast that helps pet parents understand and optimize the health of their furry family so they can live the full and happy life you want for them. And here's your host, veterinarian doctor Alex Avery.

Dr. Alex:
Hello, Kia ora. Welcome back to another episode of the show. I'm bringing you this one from a brand new computer. So if you were listening to me a few weeks ago, you you heard my sorry tale from the start of the year where, I got sick, probably COVID. I don't know. I was testing negative, but I'm sure it probably was because everyone else at work suffered from it. And then my computer died, and it was off at the repair shop. But it was terminal, so I'm on a new machine, which is quite it's quite fast.

Dr. Alex:
It's quite it's a bit nicer, but it was an unnecessary cost. So anyway, see if it's not one thing, it's the other sometimes, isn't it? But we're back today with another episode of the show and another fantastic question, from Trish who you'll hear from in just a little bit. And, actually, it's a really timely question because I was dealing with a very similar problem, not that long ago as you'll hear in my answer as well. But just before I get into that, I hope you're doing well. I hope that wherever you are in the world, life is treating you good, and your pets are nice and healthy and enjoying. If you're in the northern hemisphere, the onset of spring here, we've got autumn. The leaves are changing, and it's got a little bit colder, but still the sun's shining a lot of the time and, life's life's all good with me, which is wonderful. As always, if you're not subscribed to the show, make sure you hit that subscribe or follow button on Spotify if that's why you're listening to this on just so that you don't miss out on any of my future episodes.

Dr. Alex:
And you too can get your question answered simply by heading to our pets health dot com slash question or taking checking out the link in the show notes to this episode. And with that out of the way, here is this week's question from Trish.

voiceover:
And now on with the show.

Trish:
I've got, got foster dogs, and each one comes in seems to pick up something that we already have here. And it began with ears, but the dogs are itching all over. And we've tried various recognized, flea treatments like, the Vectum and things, but they don't seem to work for very long. We're at which end now, and I seem to be itching as well. So is there anything you can suggest? I can't really tell you much more about it. It seems to be affecting the ears, and now it's gone to the other body, the other parts of the body. And each dog if I have a dog that comes in, I don't have anymore come in. They seem to pick it up straight away, you know, hoover and change the beddings and all sorts.

Dr. Alex:
So, Trish, that's a wonderful question. And hopefully, I can get give you some clarity about what's going on and maybe some of the next action steps that you need to consider. But I definitely hear your frustration and and I always find it as well when I have, an itchy dog or cat coming in to see me, especially if they're scratching like mad in the consult room. I I tend to feel very itchy and that lasts with me for the whole day. So if you're living with that, I definitely feel your pain there. The first thought really is that we need to know exactly what the diagnosis is. We need to get a specific diagnosis to know why all of your dogs are itchy scratchy all of the time. And, Trish, the situation that you find yourself in is very similar to actually a, a case that I had.

Dr. Alex:
I think it was just after after Christmas in a big group of kenneled working dogs. Some pens, all of the dogs were itchy. There were kind of gaps in pens that didn't seem to have any itchy dogs at all, and then other ones that 1 or 2 were itchy, all of the time. Some of them mixed very regularly. Others didn't mix with them all that often. And it was a little bit of a mystery. They'd seen a different vet earlier. They'd explored the potential for for grass allergies, for something in that environment causing, a topical irritation, a contact allergy like problem that had been addressed by the the owner of the the these dogs, and there'd be no relief.

Dr. Alex:
The dogs were still itching like mad. Some were coming up in really nasty lesions, and there seems to be no end in sight to this problem. I saw the worst dog. So, the the owner just brought one dog in to see me at the clinic, and I ran my flea comb through that dog, and it was crawling with fleas. It was full of flea dirt, and that was the diagnosis that we came to. Very easy diagnosis for for me to make at that point because it got to the stage where there were just so many fleas. We then instituted appropriate treatment, and I'll come on to that in a little bit. And everything went away.

Dr. Alex:
The itch improved. It took a little bit of time, but we came to you know, we making that making that specific diagnosis, being confident in that diagnosis allowed us to come up with a plan that we could be confident was going to work, and we could eliminate the problem in the short term and then talk about a strategy to prevent it from rearing its head in the long term. So, really, when I think of a group of dogs that are all starting to itch, You know, there's lots of different things that can cause a dog to itch. But when we're talking about multiple dogs, we're thinking of a contagious problem or a problem in the environment of all these dogs. And, really, the 2 most likely things here are, as I've already mentioned, parasites. Parasites have got to be, you know, number 1 on the list generally. We're thinking here fleas but also mites and lice. So mites can be mange mite is the most common one.

Dr. Alex:
But we can get other other types of mite and lice as well, which also cause itchiness. Fleas, they're a problem where I am year round. So just because we are coming into winter, I know I'm still going to see fleas every week of the winter despite cold weather, despite potentially snow on the ground and hard frost. They've moved into the house. They set up shop, and, yeah, they're a year round issue. The other thing that we can think about is environmental factors. Now that could be cleaner. It could be a chemical that's in their environment, so what's being used to clean their clean their chem chem clean their kennels.

Dr. Alex:
Goodness me. That's a bit of a tongue twister. Or it could be a something else that's causing irritation. So, a wandering dew or a, particular plant that is that is, an an irritant to the skin, and that's causing them to itch. Be less likely to start off at the ears there. You normally get with contact allergies. You normally get it more in the hairless part of the the belly, in the groin, under the arms. And then maybe if they're rolling around, it can be at other parts of the body.

Dr. Alex:
But, yeah, feet as well, contact with the ground It's normally parts of the body that are in contact rather than, you know, starting off at the ears and then moving moving elsewhere. But the first step is to make a diagnosis. Now when it comes to, parasites with fleas like I say, using a flea comb is really effective. It's probably the most cost effective piece of kit that I have in my consult room. We're looking for live fleas, but we're also looking for flea dirt. So that is little black specs that when you dampen that down on a piece of toilet tissue or something and rub it, it's a rusty red color rather than going brown or black, which would suggest it's actually just dirt dirt rather than flea dirt. For parasites, for other parasites, so for lice, we can see those with a flea comb as well. For mites, they live within the skin.

Dr. Alex:
So generally, we need to do skin scrapes for those. Now that's something that will need to be done at the vet clinic, and then looked at under the microscope. But the other way that we rule out mites is through treatment with an iso oxazoline. So these are like the Bravecto like you've mentioned before, Simparica and Nexgard are other products in this class of class of drug that are incredibly effective at killing mites, tend to do it in a single dose. And it's often simpler to actually treat than to test because a test, a skin scrape can be negative even when they are present depending on the numbers that are present in that dog's skin. Now the other important consideration with treating for parasites, either trial treatment with the mites or, treating a known flea infestation, if that's what you found, is that we need to treat all of the animals. So we can't just target the 1 or 2 that may be scratching at that time. We need to treat every single animal in that household, in that kennel group, in that environment.

Dr. Alex:
If we don't do that then there is going to be a way for the parasites to or some of those parasites to avoid the the drug to avoid being killed, so to survive for the length of time that that product is around for, and then the whole problem starts back again. We also need to treat for long enough. So in the case of a flea infestation, for example, we need to treat all dogs for 3 months at least. And the reason for that is that our, adult fleas, they lay eggs in the environment. These eggs are incredibly resistant to, to any chemicals, to drying, to to heat, to sunlight. They then hatch out into larvae, which then go into pupae, which are again incredibly resistant, and then they hatch out into adults, which is when typically they're killed by these products. So we need to not only just break the life cycle of killing the adults and killing them before they can lay eggs, we also need to wait for all of the existing eggs, larvae, and pupa to develop into adults where they can then be killed. And the speed that this life cycle takes, it varies.

Dr. Alex:
It depends on temperature, humidity, various other environmental factors. But we to be on the safe side, we need to treat for a period of 3 months. We also need to consider the fact that just because we're seeing the odd flea in that time period, it doesn't mean that the product's not working. It's just those adult fleas, they will have just hatched out and they will then feed and die before they lay eggs. So it's not that the product's working, it's just that we're working our way through that life cycle. And to give you an idea of the scale of the problem is that for every, 5 adult fleas, there are 95 eggs, larvae, and pupa in the environment. So it doesn't take very long for a a minor problem to go to a really serious infestation. And then, of course, as I discussed, we need to be thinking about the environment if we're we're not finding any fleas, if, parasites of other descriptions are not considered, then we need to be thinking of the environment.

Dr. Alex:
So having a little think back, have we changed any chemicals? Have we got any new plants growing? Is there anything different in these animals' environment that could be causing the itch? Of course, there are some more weird and wonderful things that could be going on. Something like ringworm, not very common in otherwise healthy adult dogs, more of a young dog or old dog, immunocompromised dog problem. There is other weird and wonderful skin conditions that wouldn't be expected to be contagious in multiple dogs. And allergies are clearly one of the biggest causes of continued itch, but, again, in single dogs rather than groups of dogs. And where we've got ongoing problems, if that diagnosis isn't clear, if you're not able to to do some of these tests and I'll I'll put some links in the show notes that show you what, like, Fleeta looks like, for example, and how you can can look for for that and identify that. But if we're not getting anywhere, then we really need to be talking to to your vet. You may be taking some samples. You may be discussing things in more more detail with you and able to ask you specific questions about these individual dogs and their environment to help you get to the bottom.

Dr. Alex:
Because like any condition that's ongoing or really like any condition at all, if we don't know exactly what we're dealing with, if we're not making a specific diagnosis, then our ability to correct, prevent, treat the problem can be a real challenge.

voiceover:
Helping your pet live the happy, healthy life they deserve.

Dr. Alex:
hope that helps you, Trish, and anyone else who suffers with dogs that are itchy. It gives you some ideas of what could be going on and some of the steps that we need to need to take. I think we also need to remember that as saying that common things occur commonly. So although I talk about some of the weird and wonderful things, they are rare and it's much more likely to be, a problem that is a common one and that I see potentially every week in the veterinary clinic. As well as links to that, video, I'll also leave links to other causes of itch, especially allergies. I've got loads of information on allergies. And I also have an allergy summit available to you where I brought, over 16 allergy experts where we spoke about every facet of dog allergy. You can find that to our pets health dot com slash allergiesummit or, again, in the show notes.

Dr. Alex:
And then just before I sign off, if you have any pet loving friends or family who you feel would benefit from this, I'd love it if you could forward this episode to them or or help me spread the message, by linking to it on a social media post or something like that just to allow me to to reach more pet parents and help more pets no matter where they are in the world. That's really what my mission is with this podcast and with everything that I do online. And so until the next episode of the show, I'm veterinarian doctor Alex. This is the Call the Vet Show because they're family.

voiceover:
That's it for this episode of the Call the Vet Show. Be sure to visit call the vet.org to join the conversation, access the show notes and discover our fantastic bonus content. We'll see you next time.