please help with hot spot info

as you know I have been struggling a long time with Jakes hot spots. About 4 months ago he got bit by a tick on the side of his face that caused his worst hot spot ever, well it keeps coming back in the same place, I have been able to get it to heal because , I have been able to catch it before it gets no more that an 1/4 of an inch, clean it with betadine, it scabs over asap, but then it doesnt fully heal for almost 2 weeks, poor Jake has been wearing his cone more time than its off for the last few months. last time they put him on a tetracylene antiobotic, which cleared it up right a away, but it came back, he was on antiobotics uagain


I read somehwhere and now cant find it, that an infection may be systemic which requires maybe a few months of a certain type of antibiotic

before go to the vet again I am looking for info. Should they do a culture on it. could this be happening in conjuction with his lip ick?? which I want to get cultured too.

his diet - is he is on raw only chicken and beef

 

I finally found some info and now i am concerned I just read about cushings disease,

here are the symptoms, he has 4 of the physical symptoms and 3 of the behavioral, and what really jumped out at me was the skull like appearance, I recently commented to my husband Jakes has this new w weird appearance now on the top of his head like a new bone structure.



Typical physical symptoms include:

Increased/excessive drinking (polydipsia or PD)
Increased/excessive urination (polyuria or PU)
Increased/excessive appetite (polyphagia)
enlarged, distended abdomen
muscle weakness (most commonly in the back legs)
thinning hair (alopecia--usually evenly distributed) and lack of new hair growth
thinning skin
"skull-like" appearance of head
hyperpigmentation of skin
calcified skin bumps
obesity
chronic or frequent infections (most notably pancreatitis, urinary tract infections, strep throat, and staph infections)


Behavioral symptoms include:


lethargy/decreased activity
increased panting
seeking out of cool sleeping surfaces (bathroom tiles, etc.)
disturbance of the sleep/wake pattern (increased sleeping during the day, restlessness at night)
decreased interaction with owners

 

I don't know a whole lot about hot spots in general. But I do know that with issues like these, the reason they keep coming back is that the vet is healing the HOT SPOT and not the DOG. Jake has a susceptibility to these infections, and no amout of antibiotics or cortisone will cure that.

If you would like the name of a good homeopath, please e-mail or PM me. Homeopathy cures the underlying disorder that is causing the problems, rather than treating the symptoms.

 

Jimiya,

"is that the vet is healing the HOT SPOT and not the DOG. Jake has a susceptibility to these infections, and no amout of antibiotics or cortisone will cure that."

and thats why I even stopped all his supplements in case one of them was causing it.

I agree, the underlying cause needs to be found , that is why I really dont want him on antibiotics again, and I thought okay maybe its its a staph that needs to be treated systemiclaly, but then what is causing the staph? that is why I was searching like crazy to see what can be the underlying cause, I think I will have him tested for the cushings,, and thyriod or contact the homeopath, and see what her input would be, I do have her name and #

 

hi honeybears,

sorry to hear that jake is having hot spot problems again -- i agree that it might be useful to have cultures done, especially since they seem to be chronic infections. additionally, i would ask the vet if she/he feels that they are secondary infections or primary ones. considering that jake has a history of allergies, i'd be curious to know if the allergy is the main culprit that is allowing other bacterial infections to take root.

what brand of raw diet are you feeding? would it be possible to get an alternative protein source for jake to see if his symptoms improve? i know several manufacturers produce buffalo, lamb, rabbit, etc. raw diets.

i'd also really encourage you to get jake tested for cushings, especially since you've observed quite a few of the symptoms. my boy tested positive for hypothyroidism with just two symptoms (poor coat + sleeping more - which are easily ignored as just "old age"). plus, IF he tests positive for it, i would think that treating cushings would help fight the pyoderma and hot spot. by the way, has he been on consistently high doses of prednisone in the past to control his allergies/itching?

 

Homeopathy does not care WHAT the underlying cause is. It is rooted in all sorts of things relating to everything that has happened to him and what he inherited from his parents, etc. Homeopathy first takes a detailed case history, because no two dogs are exactly the same. No matter what label you want to put on it - hot spot, staph infection, Cushings, etc - every dog will react slightly differently to the "disease." Taking these individual characteristics into account, a remedy is chosen that mimics the symptoms. The remedies are highly potentized, meaning they are so dilute there is nothing of the original substance in them, but they still contain the energy. The remedy can act very quickly, but more often with a chronic process like Jake's it could take weeks or more, but you will see a steady improvement.

I don't think any traditional vet will EVER find the underlying cause, let alone be able to cure it. They treat symptoms. They label a disease ("Oh, he has staph infection") and prescribe a cookbook solution (i.e. staph = antibiotic, yeast = anti-fungal, etc). This assumes that every dog is exactly the same.

Every time you "cure" the symptoms, you are actually suppressing the underlying disease and depriving the body of the least harmful way to express that disease and forcing it to come up with different and worse ways to express it.

 

Jimiya, so the homeopathc treats the sysmtpoms and not the disease? isnt that what you are saying vets do? I am confused?

 

No, a homeopath uses the symptoms (including things you wouldn't think are symptoms - like whether he prefers hot or cold, other likes and dislikes, behaviors, etc) to identify what remedy is appropriate. Then the remedy corrects the underlying problem that is producing ALL of the symptoms. Sometimes more than one remedy is required, but always one at a time with plenty of time in between to see what is going on with the dog.

Look at it this way. A homeopath chooses ONE remedy that matches the symptoms and traits of the dog as closely as possible. That remedy is given and allowed to act. In a simplified and ideal situation, the remedy will cure the underlying problem which results in the symptoms disappearing. Most diseases are so complex and caused by so many factors (due to pollution, kibble, poor quality water, vaccinations, drugs, etc) that one remedy will act incompletely and have to be followed by another, maybe weeks or months down the line.

On the other hand, a traditional vet will choose a symptom and find his cookbook drug to eliminate that symptom. If there are multiple symptoms, often multiple drugs are chosen. Each drug has its own side effects, and sometimes more drugs are then prescribed to counteract these side effects and so on and so on...

Meanwhile, as each local symptom is suppressed, the body keeps trying to express the underlying disease in the least harmful way possible - but as the drugs continue to suppress the more superficial symptoms the disease is driven deeper. So, itchy skin suppressed by cortisone turns into asthma which is suppressed with more cortisone which then turns into something like kidney or liver disease (I am pulling these examples out of a hat, so don't take it literally).

There are progressions, however, that are fairly common and while I don't know enough to elaborate, I'm sure my homeopath could tell you. For instance, when I mentioned to her that I was really worried about my cousin's baby who had milk allergies and horrible reflux problems as an infant and now as a toddler was developing asthma, she immediately told me that stomach problems due to milk followed by asthma is a HUGE warning sign for ADD, autism, and even cancer. She said the baby is in terrible danger when she receives her 2-year-old vaccinations of developing ADD or autism. I passed the info on, but of course her parents won't listen.

Homeopathy is an entirely different way of looking at things - a different paradigm. It is unfortunate that it lost out to the path we are on now. Think about all the autoimmune diseases you see every day. In the small class I am taking this semester, one person's niece has diabetes, one person's young friend has MS, and another has something where her body doesn't make gammaglobulin (I think - something to do with her immune system) and she has to have a 2-hour procedure done every three weeks where they transfuse it into her. And there are only half a dozen people in the class.

We are creating the chronic diseases that inflict our population with poor diet, chemicals, too many drugs, overvaccination, and believe it or not - excessive hygiene! Hygiene in itself is very important - without it, you get plagues of diseases such as cholera and polio. But EXCESSIVE hygiene causes problems all its own.

I have some links and things about this sort of thing if you are interested. I'd have to dig them up. It was a thread recently on a homeopathy list and there is a lot of reading involved.

 

Jimiya, thank you for all of the info, I actually went to a homeopathic Dr years ago for a back problem, it didnt do anythinkg, but I dont think I gave it a chance, I should look into it for myself, I am only 43 and ahve arthritis, back in Oct the Dr said I tested mildly posiiive for epstein barr virus

 

Honeybears, I just wanted to say I hope you figure out what's causing all Jake's problems and that I'm thinking about yall. I was wondering how he was doing. Has he been on cortisone alot or even lately?

And BTW, I had milk allergies as a baby and now have asthma that wasn't diagnosed or treated until I was an adult. But no ADD or autism and I got all my "shots". I just thought that was interesting.

 

Not all homeopaths are created equally, so you do have to be careful who you go to. Sometimes it does take some time to get results but sometimes it works almost miraculously. There are lots of factors involved.