Hope someone can help me !!!!

Hi everyone...am i so glad i found this brilliant site. I own a 6mnth black female staffy (got her at 8 wks) and she has been having treatment recently for both Ringworm and then Demodex mite's..we noticed when she was about 16wks old that her fur was going thin and patchy in certain places (top of head, legs, under her neck), we took her straight to the vet and it was 1st thought she had teenage acne !!! Go figure that, so she was on tabs for that but it didn't get better so i took her back and they said it was possibly Ringworm, to which i was given a shampoo (she had to have 4 baths at 3 day intervals) but that was a pain as we cudn't wrap her up or dry her after her shampoo and she just had to dry on her own, and she would give me that look of 'Please wrap me up mam in that soft fleecy blanket' !!..But after the 4th bath her fur was looking lovely and not patchy at all...Thank god..or i thought, as approx 8 days later she started loosing fur on her feet and under her neck and began chewing her feet and scratching alot (which she didn't do with the Ringworm) back to the vet we went and they done a scraping on her and found a Demodex mite, she was then given a Promeris drop to which she flared up with and looked like that thing from the Michelin tyres....we had to put her on Piriton to calm the reaction to the Promeris !!. Our vet then said in all his yrs he had never known a dog or even a Staffy to get Ringworm & Demedox Mite's at the same time !!!!. She is looking quite pitiful at the moment and am sick of people looking at her as though she is something they just stood in..Our vet wants to see if her fur starts to look abit better before applying another Promeris drop..if it duzn't i don't know what they will do.
Has anyone else had to go through all this or has any experience on what we could be telling the vet as we are both unemployed and money is quite scarce but i will give my last penny to make sure my liitle girl gets better..she has eased our broken hearts as we recently lost our 6yr old Rottie to Cancer on his tongue and he sadly lost his battle and Inca is giving us a reason to get out on walks and smile again. Inca is extra special to us and i feel like am failing her as a dog owner.... Please help if you can...[img][/img]

i'm not sure, but i know cod liver oil capsules are really good for dog coats but i dont know if it will be any good

Hiya steve...Inca has been on Omega 3 capsules for a good month or two, and she is on Wainwrights wet food ...well when she fancies eating that is !!! thank god for this site as reading through it makes me realise me little Inca isn't a weird eater and is just being a 'Staffy' haha !!!...x

woody is 12months old now and still decides when he wants to eat and when he doesnt, although depending on what you put in front of him of course-his tea its a maybe........whereas mine is a different story you would think the poor boy was starving!

Well I have experinced demodex, my first suffered terriably with it, well what we thought it was.

It started when she was about 5 months. As yours did she started to go patchy in places and thin. Took her to the vets where they did a scrape and it showed up nothing! The vet also assumed that it was mites though so he advised treatment for that, I can't remember what is was called though. Well it didn't improve so went back a week later and went through the entire procedure again, and again nothing in the scrape, but again given treatment for mites.

Well you get the gist!! 4th time in and the vet advised a skin sample to be sent off for testing, which reluctantly I agreed too. Well a week or so later it came back, but again nothing was found.

Did another skin scrape a few weeks later and finally they found a trace of mites! Yay, so I thought. Treated it and it worked!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! For a few months, then she started to thin and bald again. It wasn't as bad so I didn't go back to the vets. About 8 months on and it had all cleared up! Very wierd, We had to go back to the vets months on from the initial finding and I mentioned this to my vets, got the answer "She may have grown out of it"......................

So was annoyed with the money I had lost, but on the other hand I would spend anything to sort it out, just pleased she was finally better.

By know means am I saying yours will grow of it, mine just did. Just reasuring you that your certainly not alone.

Hi and welcome by the way, sorry about the novel, I have just returned from the vet after another ear blockage!!!!!!

Wow, you've been through the mill!

Firstly, you should look to supplements for getting her skin & coat back in good condition. The treatment for demodex can make the skin very sensitive & dry, so try giving her a teaspoonful of cod liver oil with her food a couple of times a week (or salmon oil, but that's more expensive). Also, you could try rubbing some baby oil into her coat a couple of times a week (it's messy, but it relieves dry sensitive skin).

Next, the vet in Janey's case was probably right! All pups are born with the demodex mite, just as they are all born with roundworm. Most of the time they are present in tiny numbers & do no harm, but sometimes, for seemingly no reason at all, they flare up & multiply. The good news is that usually, after treatment, they do 'grow out of it' and the mites die down to a manageable level again. It's a bit like teenage acne - some get it, some don't, but the elements needed to produce it are there in everyone.

As long as you keep her skin healthy you'll probably find that it willstart to get better over the next few months.

Good luck, she sounds like she's found the perfect home!