Urgent advice needed

I need some advice urgently!!

A friend has a predominantly white EBT who suffers badly from skin problems. My worry is, we are due to take delivery of our puppy in just over 2 weeks time and he is a pied. I have been on the Health and Fitness Forum and been advised that this problem is common in staffies too. We have a red point siamese boy who has this type of problem and is on permanent medication ( Neoral ) which controls it mostly, with the occasional outbreak of lesions.

Apart from the expense of keeping and treating a pet with these problems, I'm not sure my wife and I can cope with the emotional upset of seeing another loved pet being tormented with this itching and resenting being given daily medication.

Between you, you guys seem to have a wealth of experience.
How common is this problem??
Your thoughts please.

Between my former staffies, brother's staffies, mum's staffy, and several foster staffies, I've yet to see any skin problems.

Just my 2p.

Working dog wrote:Between my former staffies, brother's staffies, mum's staffy, and several foster staffies, I've yet to see any skin problems.

Just my 2p.

Thanks for your speedy response. Can I ask what colours, as from what I gather it's more prevalent in dogs which are predominantly white??

Four of the eight were predominantly white.

EBTs commonly suffer from skin problems, the white ones anyway.

Give me 24 hours & I'll try to get some info for you. Can you tell me what he's fed on?

Daisy is mostly white. She has minor skin irritations on her belly and paws. I put the belly irritiation down to her clumsiness and skidding through grass/on concrete or sometimes her harness rubbing.

She does chew her paws quite a bit, but doesn't appear to have made it any worse.

It is *minor* though. She doesnt mind having creams applied and bathed/showered so even less of a problem.

I suspect Daisy does not have the same issue as your doggies and I'm so sorry to hear about your doggy skin problems

Caryll wrote:EBTs commonly suffer from skin problems, the white ones anyway.

Give me 24 hours & I'll try to get some info for you. Can you tell me what he's fed on?

Sorry Caryll, no idea! The owner is a work colleague of my wife and she just heard about this yesterday and is very concerned in case we buy this wee boy which we have reserved, and end up with problems.
We are very keen to buy him because as you can see from my avatar he is gorgeous ( and very chunky ).

Ah, right. Well the skin problems are mainly with all white dogs & blue dogs. Your little cutie ( ) is red pied, so will probably be fine!

Skin allergies are often food related so what you feed is important, how do you plan on feeding your gorgeous puppy?

Cyril baby wrote:Skin allergies are often food related so what you feed is important, how do you plan on feeding your gorgeous puppy?

That's why I asked about food. It often plays a large part in skin allergies.

Caryll wrote:

Cyril baby wrote:Skin allergies are often food related so what you feed is important, how do you plan on feeding your gorgeous puppy?

That's why I asked about food. It often plays a large part in skin allergies.

Was thinking,to be on the safe side, one of the hypoallergenics..........Orijen, Acana, Fish4 dogs....something like that.

My neighbors dog ( not a Staffy ) is white and had skin problems , the vet stopped the dog having meat and put him on a diet of dried food and rice , happy to say he has not had the problem since , good luck .

reuben wrote:Was thinking,to be on the safe side, one of the hypoallergenics..........Orijen, Acana, Fish4 dogs....something like that.

All of those are good. A lot of members here swear by fish4dogs, but the others are good too!

mickgill wrote:My neighbors dog ( not a Staffy ) is white and had skin problems , the vet stopped the dog having meat and put him on a diet of dried food and rice , happy to say he has not had the problem since , good luck .

Almost all of the dry commercial dog food have meat in them so I doubt the problem was meat!

Both of my two are white, ok harv is mostly white with brindle, and chance is an ambull. But neither of them have any skin problems.

I do supplement their diet with various things to help keep healthy skin i.e

coconut oil
fish body oil
vit e
starflower oil

etc etc

A lot of commercial foods have very poor quality meat in them, there is more of the parts that we won't eat. You will probably see people recommending a certain level of protein and say that high protien has a bad effect on a dog, it isn't the protein but the quality of the protien. Dogs are designed to eat protien in raw meat, it doesn't give them a problem but poor protein does.

You shouldn't need to suppliment their food unless they have something wrong, many owners add supliments for arthritis.

When I first got Cyril who was less than half the weight he is now I gave him the same food as my other dogs but added Fish 4 Dogs, salmon mousse, it made a big difference to him and helped with his recovery.

When looking at a dog food I always go for the food with very little ingredients, those with a long list of ingredients usually have a lot of additives which can cause allergies. Cereal as the first ingredient is a big NO as well and if you look carefully at the ingredients many will have cereal further down under another name. A dog's digestive system is not designed to cope with cereal, most of it goes right through and is not absorbed. Animals designed to eat cereals like humans, cows, horses etc. all have much longer digestive systems so that they can absorb what is in cereals.

Thanks all for the advice. I think we will go for it.

What's the consensus on the food front, Orijen, Acana or Fish4dogs?

I'd also always recommend looking into a raw diet if you do have a dog with skin problems, i feed raw and the difference it made to Chance's coat and skin was amazing

Same here. I've never had a problem with Dempsey's skin - whether that's down to his colour or diet I don't know.