Hey Kaz,
if you get no joy from the vets around here (and I'd recommend heading straight to Narre Nth's WoofPurNay!!), then there's always Carol Freeman in Narre Nth (around the corner from WPN off Heatherton Rd), who is an animal naturopath type. If you want to hear about her success rate, the lady at Belgrave Pet Supplies (in Tecoma...guess it was too hard to change her name when she moved!), can tell you about Carol's work on her Old English Sheepdogs (she breeds and shows), even though she's a self-confessed sceptic (former physics lecturer, amongst other things) and can't figure out how she does it using her 'hocus pocus'! She also has Carol's business card.
My own anecdote is with my big dog. This time last year he looked absolutely rotten - open sores that had holes underneath them (press them for blood to come bubbling out sort of thing), bare patches all over him his formerly beautiful short Shepherd coat (he's a Dane x Alsatian x) and was visibly miserable and STINKY! Round after round after round of bigger and bigger doses of cortisone and we gave up. Even the fantastic vets at Narre Nth said they couldn't figure it out that he wasn't responding to the demodectic mange treatment, not even a bit. And they didn't object at all when we mentioned a naturopath - they said sometimes Carol fixes what they just can't scientifically figure out.
Well, weren't they impressed when we took him back for immunisations and he was his former beautiful but MUCH visibly happier self!
Carol worked on various fronts to get the physical aspect right. Whatever she did, and sent me home with (ALL for $50, including the follow up session!) just started to work within a fortnight.
Food for thought
I hope it stops, it's so distressing to see a pet tear themselves apart, literally
Thanks Mayaness - I usually see Peter down at Belgrave South, he was wonderful when my old dog had cancer, but although he can give potions to heal the wounds, he (the cat) keeps causing them again.
If its not fleas, tick or anything else that could be irritating him. I think it might be a behavioural issue. My cat went through a weird phase of spending hours licking his belly it got to the point where he was completely bald on his belly. We though he had fleas or an irritation took him to the vet and he just said that it seems that hes obsessed with cleaning himself. Because he would spend hours licking he would have horrible fur balls and would throw up his food. He started to lose weight. We rubbed some stuff on his belly to stop him licking and he ended up licking above his tail bald. That was about 4 years ago and now he seems to be alright now. He sometimes has his weird days and we kinda knock him so he stops doing it.
Yep, Odin's issue was a 'behavioural' one. He hadn't ever quite recovered from having pneumonia as a pup (he was about 9 weeks old and nearly didn't it through the night at the vet down the hill) and his liver and kidneys had been working inefficiently ever since - hence his body dealt with toxins by releasing them through the skin instead of the waste system. That was just one of the conclusions the 'hocus pocus' came up with, along with the emotional trauma of both leaving his litter (born in a shelter, one of 10) and then the upheaval of my son being born (which I KNOW upset him, he didn't look me in the eye for AGES), then, less than a year later we get a new dog. So, it all kind of fit in for me in an unquantifiable way, the way a skin swab couldn't detect.
Once we dealt with the physiological things we could also work with the other things and he is a much more confident dog ever since - his bark even changed and he's not intimidated by DS anymore, or even of the little dog.
And no more hacking away at himself. We still supplement his feeds with the things that keep his insides healthy.
So, yes, 'behavioural', but not just out of nowhere - we treated him holistically instead of symptomatically after just going for the symptoms like we had been.
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