Hi Doug and Cheryl,

Thanks for your question. Brody is very lucky to have such a loving mother that is working so hard to make him comfortable.

The very first thing that we need to do is figure out what infections are at play here. You mentioned all these treatments but you don’t mention many diagnostics that are related to skin infection. The first thing I want you to do is ask your veterinarian to perform a skin scraping. This is an inexpensive and simple test that will check for bacteria, mites and yeast. It’s so important to first determine if yeasts are present or not. Yeast can cause itchiness of the paws, which is where you say this started. If in fact this is a yeast infection, it’s been treated completely wrong, and it would be great if it were because you’ll be able to get rid of it with the correct treatment.

The next thing I would recommend you do after the skin scraping is a skin culture test. This is where you swap the skin with a Q-tip, send it to the lab and it will grow whichever bacteria is present on the skin and expose it to different antibiotics to figure out which one will kill it.

I can’t overstate how important these tests are. We need to figure out what the infectious agent is and remove it from the situation.

Once you have eliminated the infectious agents, you’re then left with allergies to deal with. It could be that this was all caused by an infection, however, if you are left with allergies then you’re certainly on the right track and you might find that the treatments that you’re currently utilizing may work better once the infectious agents are gone. You could consider other medications such as Apoquel or Atopica to control the itchiness. You can also look at omega-3 fatty acid products that you apply directly to the skin as well as antihistamines. These types of treatments are outlined in my article on allergies on this website. I encourage you to watch our video on antihistamine use in pets and check out the antihistamine therapy chart for dogs.

It’s my great hope and expectation that once you get the infection under control, you’ll have better success with treating the overall condition. I strongly recommend that you have a serious discussion with your veterinarian to ensure that the right diagnostic testing are completed.

Good luck.

Dr. Clayton Greenway