Via Dfordog.co.uk, Helen Rae asked me: ‘Our American bull dog regularly and more frequently itches behind her ears (until they bleed) and then licks her paws. could this be diet related? She also licks down below quite a lot.’
My answer: This does sound like an allergy problem and could be related to her diet. However, food allergies only represent a relatively small proportion of all canine allergy problems with the majority being caused by airborne allergens such as pollens and house dust mites, so it’s probably more likely to be this kind of allergy which is known as atopy.
Having said that, it is worth ruling out diet as a cause, as if it does turn out to be diet related, then feeding her an appropriate hypoallergenic diet could effectively cure her condition. The best way to do this is to feed her exclusively on a hypoallergenic diet for at least 6 weeks and see what difference this makes to her. If it does improve things, then put her back on her old diet and see if her skin gets worse again. If it does you’re proven that the diet is the cause and you should be able to control her symptoms by controlling her diet.
If this doesn’t work then you would need to talk to your vet about blood tests to look into atopic causes of her itching and using drugs such as Atopica to control the symptoms.
If you’d like to ask me a pet health question, you can do so using the Ask a Vet feature at http://www.dfordog.co.uk/ask_the_vet.htm
