Wednesday 1 February 2012

Dog Skin Problems


Skin diseases are the major health problem in dogs. When your dog starts licking and biting and rolling around the grass excessively, this means that he is suffering from a skin disease. Sometimes skin diseases can occur due to deficiency or over activity of the immune system. We can divide the dog skin problems into following categories:

·         Physical or Environmental Dermatitis.
·         Infectious Dermatitis.
·         Immune meditated disorders.
·         Allergic and Parasitic Dermatitis.
·         Nutritional Dermatitis.

In physical or environmental dermatitis, due to the external influence disease occurs. Like some dogs are very sensitive and they can be irritated by normal lawn grass. They start licking their skin thus resulting in diseases like “Hotspot” or “Lick granulomas”. Hotspot is a patch of bacterial infected skin while the later one is a disease occurred by licking the arm wrist. Infectious Dermatitis can be contagious (includes bacterial, parasitic, fungal or viral attacks) or non-contagious (when Bacterial or fungal flora attacks the skin). Like Ringworm caused by fungus and Sarcoptic canine scabies caused by parasites. Improper functioning of immune can also cause skin diseases. Same is the case with the over functioning of immune system. These are immune meditated disorders. Demodectic mange is an example of insufficient immune responses while atopic dermatitis is an example of over activity of immune system. Auto immune responses can also cause disease like Pemphigus foliaceus. Ticks and fleas come in parasitic disorders and food, fibers, medication, pharmaceutical products or even dust can cause allergic dermatitis. Imbalanced or incomplete food can also cause damage to dogs and creates problems in them. These are nutritional dermatitis. The quality of food should be good and it should be of different varieties like green food, organic food or natural dog food.

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