[Kcatlady]

Hi, I am looking for a recommendation for type of food to feed my rough collie (and other dogs) due to my collie’s skin condition. Over the past couple of years he has developed seborrheic-smelling skin with a thickened scaly type skin near his rump with crusty mostly circular type lesions all over his body. I do have a background in vet medicine as of working in several different vet offices over a 10-year period. My vet prescribed antibiotics for a skin infection which I am sure he did have at that point. After that though the lesions did not go away. We have bathed in chlorhexidine shampoo and it seems to help for a short time and then the lesions return. A grain free diet was recommended so I put them on BB Wilderness. Oh, I have him shaved so I can see his skin issues, although I don’t typically recommend shaving a dog with a double coat. The BB seems to be doing quite well, but I am wondering if anyone has seen this issue before and if so what they did. I’m all about the nutrition coming first and then treating medically if it’s not cleared up by diet. I do have to be budget conscious like most of us as I have 4 kids and 4 dogs and 12 cats. I am involved in cat rescue as well but the cat food will be for another forum, lol. Thanks very much for any comments.

• This topic was modified 10 years, 10 months ago by Kcatlady.

[InkedMarie]

I’m not fond of Blue Buffalo, too many complaints. Some good grainfrees are Annamaet, dr Tim’s, Natures Variety Instinct, Natures Logic has one grain, millet, which is a pseudo grain. If you’d like a limited ingredient grainfree, look at Natures Variety lid Instinct and Canidae Pure.

Are you using any salmon and coconut oils?

[Kcatlady]

Thanks for replying InkedMarie. I have not added anything else yet such as Omega-3 capsules or any additional oils. I honestly wanted to give the new dog food a chance to see exactly what would change on the food alone. I will certainly try supplements in the future if his skin doesn’t clear up by the change.

I have used Canidae dog food in the past which seemed to do well for a good overall healthy coat and skin but it’s not readily available to me any more since we moved.

I will look into those brands that you suggested for sure. I’m not sure if I need to go limited ingredient yet from a sensitivity/allergy standpoint or just to take out all the nasties from his food that are doing him no good and possibly weakening his ability to fight the skin issues on his own.

[InkedMarie]

Kcatlady: consider ordering online! Chewy.com, wag.com, Petflow.com & petfooddirect.com are good places. Chewys my preferred, I order from them all the time.

[theBCnut]

My dog has had those issues with a food intolerance. I had to take him off chicken, grains, and tomato. He also was showing signs of a systemic yeast infection from his gut being upset all the time, so I had to go low carb for quite a while to starve the yeast back into balance.

[Kcatlady]

Inked: I will check out those sites. I have shied away from buying food online in the past because of the expensive shipping costs. It’s been a while since I’ve looked though!

Patty: My dog’s skin lesions do cover his whole body except that they don’t really affect the head or legs. It’s like skin infection lesions that are circular-ish and flat and crusty and kind of oozy/scabby sometimes but they crust off in huge thick flakes. Since I’ve changed the food, his coat doesn’t seem to have that nasty smell. Not sure if it’s a yeast smell or a seborrheic smell or a bacteria smell!! What symptoms of a yeast infection did your dog have?

I think it is possible that my dog’s skin problems started about the time I switched the dogs to ProPlan (yes I know PP isn’t great, but it was the best I thought I could do at the time).

Ding, ding, ding, ding! And the light goes off! I’m going to have to give that some more serious thought on time line and see if I can correlate it………

[theBCnut]

He had food intolerance issues, so I can’t sort the symptoms into neat piles, and I got on the his issues very early, so he didn’t get really bad. He had nasty slimey diarrhea with blood, vomitting, hot itchy red skin, and a thin, patchy, dry coat. Those are common food intolerance symptoms, but some can be due to yeast. He also had the Frito smell, stinky cheese smell that is associated with yeast. And the skin on his belly was starting to turn black. He broke out in a staph infecting one day, dime size areas with pustules in them. Cutting out grains and other sugar sources made a dramatic difference and so did adding probiotics.

Have you looked at the possibility of ringworm?

Many of the dog food sites give free shipping on orders over a certain amount.

[InkedMarie]

Kcatlady: I think petfooddirect charges for shipping but the others don’t, if you spend a nominal amount such as $50.

[shamrockmommy]

I had a terrible time with Blue Buffalo with my dogs- ear infections, itching and diarrhea.

I like Fromm grain frees a whole bunch (only complaint is the stool is a bit large) and PetGuard Lifespan (basically a chicken/rice). They work well for my 4 dogs.

There is also California Natural that has some very simple grain free formulas you might try your dog on. Some are just so very sensitive to all the grains and herbs and “kitchen sink” formulations and it sends their body into itch overdrive.

If you don’t mink cooking, you could look into DogDishDiet.com as well. Crock pot food.
Hope this helps and your guy feels better soon!

[Susan]

One of my dogs skin problems started while on BB as well. BB has a lot of chicken/turkey. Try changing to another brand of GF food using another protein source such as lamb/bison and no chicken.

[phyllis r]

If you are still out there, I sure would appreciate hearing if anything helped. I have a 5.5 yr old rough coat collie and we have had the same types of lesions since last November. We live in Colorado, a place where fleas aren’t so prevalent – NOT! Abut a year after we moved into our house, we noticed 2 fleasy on him. He broke out in little red pimple like lesions. The vet said he was allergic to fleas. We treated for fleas with Frontline & when that didn’t work we tried K9 AvantixII. Treated the skin problem with antibiotics & steroids twice. Even tried an allergy medicine. HAD A HORRIBLE TIME. Finally got rid of the fleas. Then tried to see if was food allergy so went on Purina HA. Didn’t help. Thought it might be mites so tried 3 treatments of Revolution each 2 weeks apart. Didn’t help. In fact, when we used it for flea prevention about 3 months later, he broke out worse. From pictures we can find on the internet, it appears to be ectopic pyoderma but we can’t figure out what is causing it or how to treat it. Right now, we are able to manage it by bathing him in Head & Shoulders shampoo together with providone iodin shampoo twice weekly. We remove the scaly part & treat each lesion with a triple antibiotic ointment. We spray him down twice daily with Purishield Wound. As long as we xan keep him from itching, he seems to be comfortable. Any ideas? Oh, one more thing. before all of this he did have digestive issues. The food that we settled with was Natural Balance Duck & Potato. I would greatly appreciate anyone’s input. Berducci was born in South Dakota. We moved to Colorado when he was 2 & 1/2. We first lived in an apartment. He mostly stays inside except for walks and supervised outdoor time. We live in the city.

[Anonymous]

What you describe sounds like environmental allergies, I would suggest that you make an appointment with a dermatologist/specialist as soon as possible. /forums/search/allergies/

http://www.allergydogcentral.com/2011/06/30/dog-allergy-testing-and-allergy-shots/

Most allergens are airborne, impossible to avoid. http://www.allergydogcentral.com/2014/04/07/just-moved-our-allergic-dog-to-a-new-state/

[Apollo T]

To anyone seeking information, I was able to tend to this issue.
When the dogs skin becomes damaged is when certain bacteria may turn into infection. In the case of double coat dogs, if you do not properly rake the undercoat out, it can clump up, causing moisture to get captured against the skin. This moisture will damage the skins barrier, and the bacteria will begin to cause infection.
My understanding is that many of the types of bacterias that will cause these lesions are normally on the skin, but won’t cause breakouts unless the skin barrier is disturbed.
With this scenario, antibiotics may assist with dialing back the bacteria, but unless the cause for damaged skin is addressed, infections will probably still show up. And who knows what natural biome the antibiotics are disrupting.

Allergies in food can cause inflammation that will cause breakages in skin.
Fleas, ticks, mites, etc can also cause these breaks in the skin barrier.
Stress can exacerbate these or even cause these issues as well.
Improper grooming may lead to infections too.
Anything that may cause damage to the skin will cause this to happen.
Vets have comprehensive allergy testing. You can also feed the dog whole foods and add doggy vitamins.
For grooming a double coat, I recommend carding knives, grip chalk, and a slicker brush with a rubber band.

If your dog is having extreme an extreme case that won’t stop, you can ask for an oral steroid to give the body time to recuperate.

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