[Badboris27]

Hi – While looking through dog food reviews at this wonderful site, I looked at the Forums section and stumbled across your email. I felt that I had to reply. For the past 2+ years, my wife and I have been dealing with dramatic skin issues with our 8+ year old Huskies. We’ve had severe loss of fur from round skin sores that become very aggravated and sometimes bloody. Yellow flaky material was found around the edges of the sores. Both of our dogs would lick these sores and make them even worse.

We tried EVERYTHING including sprays, Neosporin, special shampoos, bathing the dogs every week or two, changing foods, you name it.

Everything we read and everything we learned indicated that this entire issue was allergy-based. We had (and still have) no idea if it was airborne allergens or food allergies.

At this time, our oldest Husky, who’s condition was the worst, is completely free of ANY sort of skin issues and his coat has completely replenished itself. Our slightly younger female is making excellent progress on the same program. Here’s how things got better for our dogs, in a hurry:

A life long friend in Texas was fostering a dog in their home and it had significant skin issues, sores and hair loss. They called the shelter for whom they were fostering the dog and here’s the advice they were given:

1. “Allergy” dogs do REALLY well on grain-free food, GOOD quality dog food and especially one that is of a fish & sweet potato variety. “Alternate” protein sources like venison or bison are good, too. Stay away from chicken / poultry based food.
2. Give the dog a tablespoon of raw, LOCAL honey every morning and every evening. this helps their immune system adapt to allergenic pollens that get on their coat and in their feet. It MUST be LOCAL to get the pollens that are in your area.
3. Give the dog a tablespoon of unsweetened, plain yogurt every morning and every evening. The pro-biotics help their digestive system. We use “FAGE Total 0%”.
4. Help the dog’s immune system with a good quality multi-vitamin given per the manufacturers’ directions.
5. Shampoo as follows: Use a Benzoyl Peroxide Shampoo (“Vet Solutions” BPO-3 Shampoo for about $10 on Amazon) and next with a Hexadine shampoo (large bottle of Virbac brand is about $14 on Amazon).
6. Spot treatment is a good idea until the food-honey-yogurt-vitamin formula “kicks in”. We used “Virbac Chlorhexadine Gluconate Flush” from a local horse veterinary store. 12 oz was about $16.

After about 8-10 weeks, we have NO signs of any skin problems. This was such a relief after 2+ years of extreme frustration, anguish and expense.

The Texas shelter advised that extreme conditions could take up to four months as some dogs respond more slowly to the honey pollens.

Hope that this may be of help to you!

Jeff