Hello, We have a mini long-haired Doxie mix (with what, we wish we knew!), who also scratched himself silly. We learned from the doggie dermatologist that food allergies rarely respond to steroids (the “P” in Temaril-P is prednisone). His scratching did not respond to steroids, which indicated a food allergy. His food had just about every common allergen (see article on this site regarding allergies). We switched him to a buffalo-based canned food (he hated it) because it was unlikely he had been exposed to that protein (he has a tender tummy and many of the novel proteins and hypoallergenic foods are higher in fat). It took about 2 weeks, but his licking stopped and he was cone free! After 6 months we were told we could add one of the proteins contained in his previous food. Because he loves, loves, loves chicken, I poured some homemade chicken broth on this food. Within about 24 hours, he was attacking his body again. He is now on an all-beef diet, which is hard to find because it seems like there is some kind of chicken in every food or it is too high in fat… sigh.
If you find that it is a food allergy–and you can figure out the offending ingredient–you may want to consider a product called BalanceIT. BalanceIT was designed by a vet (formerly on the UC Davis faculty) and products include supplements for making homemade food as well as a product that you simply add to meat if you want to make homemade food. I understand from our vets, as well as a recent peer-reviewed study, that it is extremely risky to make food for your dog without the proper supplementation:
http://news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=10666
With vigilance and a good plan to rule out problems, you will figure it out. Hope this helps. Good luck.
