Jump to content
Dogomania

Hotspot Remedy


lkeffect

Recommended Posts

I have two dogs that get hotspots constantly. I currently give them cephalexin as an anti-biotic....then I shave the spot down and put a cortisone/steroid spray topped off with bitter apple on it. Then the dreaded E-collar. Does anyone have an alternative ways to treat hotspots....natural or medical?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't know but would like to know too of a natural skin topical - not sure if it's a "hot spot" but Buddy has a spot where they shaved him for the HW treatment that is really flaky and itchy and the hair is not growing back as it should. We're going to the vet Thu. but in the meantime I second this, is there anything good for the "spots"?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

treating the hotspots themselves is really only dealing with symptoms. you need to find out what [b]causes[/b] them and work from there to stop them from appearing.

since both dogs are getting hot spots, it's more than likely that both dogs are exposed to whatever is causing them - it would be too much of a coincidence that two dogs develop hot spots at the same time for different reasons, unless maybe they are of the same breed and related.

first examine what you are feeding. most of the time switching to a food that doesn't have certain ingredients is a solution already, but that is unlikely in this situation. here i'd rather suspect that the quality of the food could be a problem. what are you feeding? brand and type of food, any supplements?

my next guess after examining the diet would be allergies or an autoimmune disease. i can't help you to diagnose them - that's a vet's job, and preferably a holistic vet. but i can tell you that boosting the immune system in order to help the body heal itself is a good idea. you can do things like
- plain organic yogurt with live cultures or a high quality probiotic supplement. natren's canine dophilus is good quality and easy to use. this replenishes the friendly bacteria int he intestines that help the immune system. these are killed by antibiotics, so i suggest using a high potency supplement for a week or two and then use yogurt for maintenance.
- 1000 mg of fish oil per 10 lbs of body weight daily ([b]not[/b] cod liver oil but a fish body oil). if you give fish oil, also give additional vitamin E, since the omega 3 fatty acids oxidize rapidly and increase antioxidant requirements in the body. 400-800 IU daily depending on the dog's weight.
- essiac formula (gaia herbs sells it under the name "sheep sorrel/burdock supreme", azmira as "immune stim'r"), dosage is 1 drop per 5 lbs of body weight in a little warm water 3-4 times daily. you can also buy essiac tea and prepare it yourself, but the tincture is easier to use.

there are other options, but it's not a good idea to try too many things all at once. you can read more about it at [url]http://www.allourpets.com/holistic/immune-system.shtml[/url] and dr. messonnier's book mentioned on that site is an excellent resource. ([i]side note: i do not endorse the dog food advertised on that site, but the article is good.[/i])

moving on to topical treatment for immediate relief. please try treating these hotspots without antibiotics, cortisone and steroids. all three are temporary fixes that do not address the underlying problems and will over time make it harder and harder to successfully treat the problem.

to help the skin heal, you can use the following:

use equal amounts of comfrey, calendula, sage, bee balm, thyme and yarrow to brew a tea. soak the affected areas and let dry undisturbed.

if the hot spots are really bad already and the dogs are constantly scratching or chewing:

equal amounts of fresh or dried juniper (yes, the common landscaping shrub), calendula flowers and peppermint leaf. combine herbs in a glass or stainless steel pot. cover with water and bring to a gentle boil. simmer for 10 minutes, then cover and let cool. drain the cooled fluid through a strainer. soak the affected areas and let dry.

if the dogs try to lick it off, use a towel or cloth to cover the affected areas and liberally soak the fabric with the preparation. you can leave this on for several hours at a time.

whew, long post, but i hope you'll find it useful. and please let me say it again, it is very important that you find out what causes these hotspots and not just treat the symptoms. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

[quote name='desertlady']I don't know but would like to know too of a natural skin topical - not sure if it's a "hot spot" but Buddy has a spot where they shaved him for the HW treatment that is really flaky and itchy and the hair is not growing back as it should. We're going to the vet Thu. but in the meantime I second this, is there anything good for the "spots"?[/quote]

That doesn't sound like a hot spot....hot spots are typically areas that are covered with puss and scabs, sometimes minimal bleeding if the dog has been chewing at it and it spreads like wild fire if the dog can reach it. You can usually find it first because the dog will be constantly licking the area (lots of wet fur in a localized spot) It will come out of no where often overnight it springs up and left untreated it can more than double in a day. After I start treating them and put an E-collar on....my dogs will regularly jump up as if someone just lit a fire under them or something bit them because it's itching/hurting so badly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

[quote name='TDG']
since both dogs are getting hot spots, it's more than likely that both dogs are exposed to whatever is causing them - it would be too much of a coincidence that two dogs develop hot spots at the same time for different reasons, unless maybe they are of the same breed and related.[/quote]

They are different breeds, one is a 5 month old Bernese Mountain Dog (Summit), one is an 8 year old Golden Retriever(Bentley). They both are eating different foods as well.

[quote name='TDG']first examine what you are feeding. most of the time switching to a food that doesn't have certain ingredients is a solution already, but that is unlikely in this situation. here i'd rather suspect that the quality of the food could be a problem. what are you feeding? brand and type of food, any supplements?[/quote]

Summit is eating Eukanuba Large Breed Puppy. Bentley is currently eating a combo of Eukanuba Natural Lamb and Rice Large Breed (It's a trial, I belive I am going to switch to the BARF diet). They both get Cosequin DS, Pet Tab Vitamins. Bentley also gets Soloxine for his thyroid.


[quote name='TDG']use equal amounts of comfrey, calendula, sage, bee balm, thyme and yarrow to brew a tea. soak the affected areas and let dry undisturbed.

if the hot spots are really bad already and the dogs are constantly scratching or chewing:

equal amounts of fresh or dried juniper (yes, the common landscaping shrub), calendula flowers and peppermint leaf. combine herbs in a glass or stainless steel pot. cover with water and bring to a gentle boil. simmer for 10 minutes, then cover and let cool. drain the cooled fluid through a strainer. soak the affected areas and let dry.[/quote]

Ok I'm all for this however we have very few stores that sell anything holistic, organic, herbal or otherwise. I may be able to locate some of these things but I doubt all.

I also completely agree that I'm merely treating the symptoms not the cause which is why I posted. It's really odd though in Bentley's case I have tried countless high quality foods over his lifetime. Everything from Nutro, Science Diet, Innova, California, Eukanuba, (one of my breeders swore by ProPlan and I attempted it momentarily but my dogs wouldn't hated it.) Many more but you get the idea. I also own 12 dogs, 6 of whom live with me. Of those twelve I have hotspots and thyroid issues with Bentley, Cerebellar Abiotrophy and bladder stones (Scottish Terrier - Beatrice) Elbow and Hip Dyslpasia Chronic yeast infections (Golden - Brookstone, hot spots (BMD Summit) Reproductive issues (Scottie - can't seem to get pregnant and they can't find anything wrong with her) You get the idea but I also have several who have never been sick a day in their lives not even thrown up or had diarrhea. I cannot figure out what is going on over here....my house is clean, I have an air purifier, the yard is cleaned daily, dogs all get more than regular vet care and blood panels run yearly. I myself am an animal behaviorist and vet assistant about to apply to vet school so it's not like I don't notice any slight change in health or behavior.....and to be honest I really don't have the time to switch to the BARF diet not to mention the cost of feeding that many dogs. But I think I am going to at least give it a shot because I don't really know what else to do. These guys are my children not my pets.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

definitely not easy to get to the bottom of things there. my personal first line of defense would really be boosting the immune system. the essiac is really great, when i used it on animals or even myself, i've seen drastic improvements in just a matter of days.

if you think that a completely raw diet is not an option for you (understandable, it can be expensive unless you buy in bulk), try to at least remove grains from the diet as far as you can. try a potato or sweet potato based kibble or a home cooked diet. dr. pitcairn's complete guide to natural health for dogs and cats has a number of excellent recipes. i suspect that grains in the diet may be a problem, but using human grade oatmeal, cornmeal or rice can already make a difference and is not the same as the poor quality grains in commercial foods. iams and eukanuba are two brands made by the same manufacturer that i always recommend people should stay away from. have you tried eagle pack? i know of a lot of people with large breeds who have had really good results on it.

as far as buying herbs and other things goes - fish oil you can get at any drugstore. not all brands are good quality and some aren't even pure fish oil, but the "nature made" brand sold at sav-on is good quality and not expensive. i buy the natural vitamin E of the same brand. if i were you, i'd stop the pet tabs and look for a better quality multivitamin. pet tabs consist of a bunch of sweeteners, liver meal for flavor, binders, mostly synthetic vitamins (which are not as effective as those in natural form, but of course a lot cheaper for the manufacturer to use) and poorly absorbable mineral supplements. you'd be better off with something like wellness super 5 supplement or dr. pitcairn's DIY supplement "healthy powder". you'll have to spend a little more money on that than ont he pet tabs, but they are really not a good product.

with the less common herbs and things like the sheep sorrel/burdock supreme or azmira immune stim'r, your best bet is to order online. there are also some premade herbal skin treatment formulations you can try - personally i prefer compounding my own, but i can see how some things might be difficult to find for people. aromadog and azmira have formulations and halo has something called "derma dream salve" that has a combination of some herbs i mentioned as well as some additional ones.

don't beat yourself up too much about all these problems, it's all such a complex picture with many factors involved, such as reactions from over vaccinating or simply genetics.

last but not least, feeding a raw or home cooked diet (i try avoiding the term BARF, since i don't believe in that particular following of dr. billinghurst) is not as labor intensive as you might expect. if you are interested, here's an excellent website on the topic. i don't follow that regimen either because i'm somewhat restricted in what's available to me due to living in a big city, but it has a lot of very useful information:

[url]http://www.rawdogranch.com[/url]

my own dog has been completely off commercial food for almost 3 months now and i need about half an hour or so to prepare all his meals for a 2-week period. everything is then frozen in appropriate portions and all i need to do is to remember taking it out of the freezer the day before. it's easy once you have a good routine going.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This isn't addressing all of the issues discussed and thank you for all of your advice. You asked if I have tried Eagle Pack and I have along with many other of the higher end brands and I am reasonably educated about dog food. I too am not a Eukanuba fan and I have never fed the lower end (meaning below in quality to Eukanuba) Iams. The problem that I have is that I have several picky eaters, I also have one Golden that would eat anything you put in front of him. But Bentley (Golden with hotspots) and Berkshire (Scottie) being the worst. They will protest food to an annoying degree. I of course always mix a new food and gradually increase the new product. I've seen these guys willing to go days without eating on some brands (various forms of Science Diet for example). Eagle pack even some of my good eaters got funny about it. I also tried the recently new supposedly all Organic dry food.....totally brain farting right now I can't think of what it is called. While I was mixing that....my dogs were sneaky and literally picking out the pieces of the old food and left the organic stuff behind. Needless to say I never made it over to that one. So far Eukanuba has been the only thing I can get all of my dogs to eat and I hate the food.

As for the health issues I don't beat myself up over it. It devastates me when anything is wrong with one of my kids but I'm aware of all the possible contributions to each ailment. And in some cases I just plain know it was hereditary/breeding. These guys are also spoiled rotten from their own room/furniture, to toys, to activities, to land I bought for them, to the pond I put in for them, to 3 24 hour on call vets that know them personally, to training and on and on....I am quite confident that I am doing my best for them and probably then some nonetheless no matter what you do it's never perfect there is always something better you can do and in the diet arena....I would like to do better for them and then in turn hope that it helps some of their unresolved medical issues. Thank you for the link I will check it out. In the past when I very temporarily had them on the BARF diet it went over exceedingly well. I did not follow Dr. Billinghurst's letter of the law and had done some of my own research and deviated a bit. I am curious to know if you aren't feeding the diet from the link or the BARF diet...what natural/raw diet are you doing? I'm particularly interested in something that takes only a half an hour for two weeks. That would be wonderful....I think it takes me longer than that to get all of guys eating.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i feed two meals a day, with the evening meal being a chunk of raw meaty bone (turkey necks, lamb shanks, chicken backs, turkey and chicken wings, beef, pork and lamb necks and ribs and various other pieces. these i just hack into portion sized chunks and freeze them. feeding is done in seconds.

the morning meals consist of various recipes made from organ meats and oddities like heart, lung, tripe, fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds and small amounts of grains. these i prepare in batches for two weeks in advance and freeze them. at feeding time, i add yogurt, a heaping teaspoon of dr. pitcairn's healthy powder and whatever other supplements are required. basic recipes are from his books, with some personal tweaks to my liking, since overall i find most of his standard recipes are a little high in grains.

if you organize your shopping, it's really not hard. i shop as needed and freeze semi prepared things (such as different varieties of blended raw veggie mush, organ and meat blends cut in chunks etc.) so i only have to thaw a few containers, mix the recipe, cook part of the ingredients if it's called for and then refreeze in portions.

whenever i have leftovers and trimmings of meats or veggies that are suitable for dog food, i alzo freeze them for later use.

i have a pretty solid background in nutrition, so i feel confident doing things my own way rather than following a strict regimen set forth by someone else. i find the whole BARF thing too overdone when it comes to supplements.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We got a lot off topic here :) TDG I truly appreciate your advice! I am pretty up on dog food brands and contents but I am not even close to being able to say I have a strong background in nutrition. I'm much better with the dogs than I am with myself (If that tells you anything) If money were ever low I'd live off of Ramen Noodles before feeding my dogs a grocery store brand and if only I could add and take off weight on myself like I can with my dogs. Thank goodness for a physical job or I'd be a house....hehe so your advice is great thank you so very much!

Do you or anyone else have any additional remedies for hot spots? Both symptom treating and contributing factors advice?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Our rottie (now passed) suffered from hot spots, It took a while to figure out the cause but we did. The first one appeared after a bbq and at first I thought that some fat had spilled on his neck. Trip to the vet revilled a nasty hot spot which grew before our eyes this was treated in much the same manner as you discribe, shaved, meds (antis, cort) scub area with salt water dry area then scub with iodine, dry area then apply neotopic H which I think is a antiseptic type cream. After more trips to the vet for repeted hot spots and trying to figure out any contriputing factors, It was after another bbq that I realised that friends had throwen the dog the scraps (snags etc) from then on I cut out all known preservities and feed a diet of Bonnie dry food (based on Kangaroo meat with no added colours, flavours) apart from this he had home cooked stews (chicken and vegies)
I would tell friends not to give him any thing without asking first and we were very careful with what we fed him. He would still have the odd flare up but nothing like our weekly visits to the vet, these could be managed at home with the iodine scubs and the neotopic H.
Good luck and I hope you get to the bottom of you dogs hot spots.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

One of our dogs has had a hot spot 3 times.

The first time was after he got de-sexed. He had to wear an E-collar to stop him getting to his stitches and I think he bashed his head into so many things while wearing it, that it kept pushing back on his neck and caused a bit of a graze. We then had rain for 7 days straight. The area got wet and wasn't able to get fully dry. He is an Alaskan Malamute and has a VERY thick coat so although tried to keep him as dry as possible he was damp for those 7 days. The hot spot set in and he went to the vet, got the area shaved, had cortisone tables and cream etc.....

The second time was due to an extended period of rain again. The hot spot was in the same area as last time. Back to the vet and same treatment again.

After the second time we decided to buy a forced air blower so we could ensure that he was dry all the way to the skin.

Rain again. OH was the one that dried him with the dryer but as it was still fairly new and Indy was still a bit scared of it he probably didn't dry him for as long as he should have. Got another hot spot - same spot again. (as a side note the guard hairs never grew back properly in that area from the first time he was shaved so I think that was why he was so susceptible to them there). So this time I didn't want the area shaved. Like it or not I used the dryer on him about every half hour to make sure the area was totally totally dry. I also alternated between applying an antiseptic spray and an antiseptic drying powder. Then used the dryer on the area some more....... then did it again.... and again. It cleared up in a few days.

We now use the dryer to make sure he is always totally dry right down to the skin and since some time as passed the guard hairs on the back of his next have grown back again so he has his natural level of protection again.

Haven't had another hot spot since.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
Guest Anonymous

[quote name='lkeffect']I have two [url="http://www.ntsearch.com/search.php?q=dogs&v=56"]dogs[/url] that get hotspots constantly. I currently give them cephalexin as an anti-biotic....then I shave the spot down and put a cortisone/steroid spray topped off with bitter [url="http://www.ntsearch.com/search.php?q=apple&v=56"]apple[/url] on it. Then the dreaded E-collar. Does anyone have an alternative ways to treat hotspots....natural or medical?[/quote]

I use Listerine or Apple cider vinegar. I put it in a spray bottle and directly spray it onto the hotspot. Works well for me. I noticed the hotspot dries a lot faster.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

My friend who breeds Newfoundland dogs is experiencing the same problem with her dogs. She currently has 7 dogs at the kennel and every single one of them has hot spots and skin conditions. Even her 8-month-old pup is having skin problems and hot spots. She works at a Vet clinic so the dogs receive top of the line conventional treatments. It just makes me wonder as you mentioned you feed Eukanuba, that is what she feeds her dogs as well. I have 3 of her Newf's and I have no skin problems at all only one of my dogs has experienced a hot spot and that is my old girl Cassie (she actually had lick dermentititis brought on from stress...I had just lost 2 Newf's due to problems).
Its just odd that both of you are experiencing the same problems. First she blamed it on the environment and through precautions in that regard. She used antibiotics and skin topical's. She then blamed it on the shampoo, we were using A-1 all systems at the time. She then thought that perhaps she wasn't getting all the shampoo out. She brushed these dogs daily and they had little undercoat...you can take a fine toothcomb to these dogs at any time. It was not due to mats, as the dogs do not have any. The dogs are always blown completely dry, I don't bother blowing my dogs out completely dry and I have never had a hot spot :D perhaps the dogs skin was being dried out by too much bathing and blow drying so she stopped bathing the dogs every 4 weeks. Still no success, to this day she has still have problems with her dogs. She also has problems with breeding, her bitches half the time don't take. They all have to be Artificially inseminated...the males cannot breed naturally :roll:
Im sorry to go on, but, it just sounds so much like my friends problems...the only difference she will not listen to a word I say as I am just the lower class help at the kennel :-?
We all know that hot spots are a combination of different problems. Diet, exercise, proper grooming, stress. You sound like you know all the in's and out's regarding nutrition etc. of course I would definitely be taking the dogs off Eukanuba, it just seems much too coincidental that yourself and my friend are experiencing the same problems. Try to get more omega 3 fatty acids in the dogs diet. I add canned sardines to my dog

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Anonymous

the other night my 3 year old yellow lab got into the garbage. he did have the poops but now he isnt going at all. he has no energy and he is shaking. i am really worried about him. someone did tell me that i can give him a people laxative. does anyone know if that is true? could someone please help me make my puppy feel better. thanks. :cry: :cry:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...