It seems that as the years go by, a dogs skin gets more and more sensitive to allergies, dry skin and other uncomfortable conditions. I have always been sensitive to grasses and pollens...we're not sure exactly which ones, but the rashes and dark blotchy spots seem to come out in the warmer weather. At first we thought it was because of the flea treatment, but it's not.
At first we thought that washing me was the best thing to do to get the allergens off and to clean my skin. We are learning that this is not such a good idea, depending upon what shampoo you use. We thought baby shampoo would be a good idea, but over-washing with certain shampoos removes the natural oils from the skin, making me even more itchy and my skin even more scaly in spite of the fact that I smell so good.
We have read that using aloe based shampoo will help, so we are considering this...not shampoo that contains aloe, but is actually aloe based. Another idea my owner has is a rinse with aloe vera juice. Oatmeal and Aloe Shampoo
is supposed to help, and we are going to try a Hydrocortisone Spray with Aloe Vera
for the extra itchy spots.
What have you done for dry skin for your dog? We are open to suggestions and will let you know how we do in treating my dry skin.
Updated 3/18/13 - We have been using the shampoo and the spray mentioned since we originally posted this, and it has been helping quite a bit. We rarely have to use the spray. Diet also seems to affect my skin. If we try something new, and I have a flare up, I don't eat that food again.
This post was formerly a stop in a Red Flower Blog Hop, and I couldn't resist this cute Yorkie with a Red Rose
- adorable, isn't it?
Even though it's Valentines Day today, and it has been a beautiful day, I am a bit heart sick because of the fact that so many posts on this blog are unreachable right now because of moving the blog. I used an app to transfer from Wordpress to Blogger, and the transfer went fine, or so I thought. I can see the problem posts in my list of posts for editing, etc., but when I click "view", I get an error page. This isn't true of every post, but enough that I know that I'm disappointing many visitors.
I have reverted all of the problem posts to drafts and will repair and republish each one over the coming weeks. In the meantime, the posts that you CAN see are under the "Archives" in the right margin. You have to open the month, etc., to see the post titles.
I am sincerely sorry about this, it has happened to every blog I've moved, but this one in particular gets many visits and has more posts than the rest that are not presently visible.
They'll all be back soon, and soon the search engines will catch on to the changes in the urls.
So you see, I'm not so very savvy when it comes to transferring blogs, and do appreciate your patience.
Now, back to happiness, happy Valentines Day from Aspen and her family!
We originally posted this a few months back, and will leave the post intact, but want to update you! This is one of the posts that didn't transfer very nicely when we used an application to transfer this blog from Wordpress to Blogger.
Before you read the following, please know that it has been almost a year since Aspen tore the cruciate ligaments in her legs. Though she is not allowed to jump up and down any longer, and can't do so, she has adjusted to her bed on the floor. We hold her when we can, and she can walk around on her own. If she were a LARGE dog, it may be a different story, but she is small and doesn't have has much weight to carry around. Aspen will be 14 next month, and we treasure each day that she is with us.
Now, below is the content of the original post:
We find ourselves writing on Aspen's behalf more as she gets to be an elder dog. Not that she doesn't still have lots of energy when she is in the mood, but she tends to sleep more now.
We told you about her cruciate ligament tear injury first here and then gave an update when she tore the ligament in the other leg.
Ten weeks have gone by at least since this all started, and she is walking around pretty normally. We downloaded the Recovery Guide, it's free, and signed up to get weekly emails to remind us what steps we should be taking to keep Aspen recovering well.
She definitely isn't the same dog she was, always jumping up on things and such, but she has this past week - against our better judgment sometimes, stood on her hind legs against the side of a chair, chased a squirrel a short distance, and is walking all the way around the back of the house and back, so very much better than she used to be.
We give her pain medicine prescribed by the Vet less frequently, but still about once a day, skipping an occasional day just to get a true picture of how much discomfort she is in. We also purchased a Glucosamine/Chondroitin product suggested by the same people that put together the Cruciate Guide. All of this seems to be helping.
We are never going to allow her to jump again, in fact she can't even if she wants to try. She can barely do a step still. But she is also a small, lightweight dog, so that should be taken into consideration when reading her progress.
It has been quite a while - in fact years since this Yorkie has had it's teeth cleaned. As an elder dog, my owners are concerned about me having me anesthetized so they use a spray that helps to keep the plaque away, which seems to work. But it is important to have your dogs teeth cleaned. It is the cause of bad breath in dogs.
We put together a page about having teeth cleaned.
I remember that my food dish and water dish will disappeared at midnight the night before I went in, since they will be putting me to sleep for the cleaning. Please do visit the helpful page about having a dog's teeth cleaned.
My family and I were sad to hear that Barney Bush, the Scottish Terrier owned by former President George W. Bush and Laura Bush, has died. He had Lymphoma and his body could no longer fight the disease. We loved Barney and miss seeing him as well as his devoted family living in the White House.
In fact, way back in 2008 when Barney guided one of his famous Christmas tours of the White House, we did a post about it, you can find it here. It includes videos of the tour. Barney still has an archival page on Whitehouse.gov.
It is hard for people to lose their pets, I know that because I overhear my owners talking about how sad and hard it will be when I have to move on. So give your dogs a hug, a tummy-rub, and an extra treat. Appreciate us while you have us, we appreciate you and depend on you more than you know.
Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Bush family as we know how much they will miss Barney, the White House Scottish Terrier.
Image Credit: Wikipedia Commons
Updated 2/28/17
