Dog Skin Sores can be small blisters to red spots that crust over and ooze a slightly yellow fluid.
They spread rapidly and are very hard to eradicate. I have found only medication and skin therapy works.
Sores or "hot spots" can sometimes be bacterial infections such as staph.
Treating and dealing with dog sores on skin and infections can be frustrating.
Many times the cause of dog sores is an allergic reaction to contact with toxins but in their particular case they are bacterial infections, which only treatment will eradicate.
These sores look like the photo to the left. This is the beginning of a staph infection.
You can see that they are small red and very numerous sores on the belly and on the underside of the tail. In about 24 hours a scab forms and seals the infection.
You have to get under that scab and treat the sore with antibiotics or a topical cream for infections that should be placed on the sore after the scab has been removed.
Usually your vet will give you antibiotics and that usually works. Sometimes it does no good. Be sure to ask your vet before you do this because you want to be safe rather than sorry. Also ask for a skin scraping to determine what is causing the sores.
One other test is needed and that is a test to see which antibiotic will be most effective in treating this condition. Many will not work on your dog for a variety of reasons, so it is in the best interest to pin point which med will work, instead of trying every antibiotic and having them fail. It costs you money and the vet is taking it.
I hear so many dog owners say that their pet has dog sores all over their body and it is very hard to control and heal.
They say that they begin looking like a red spot, which then becomes larger with a scab that forms on the sore. These dog sores will not go away in time. They just get worse.
Underneath the sore is puss and an extremely infectious serum that can produce numerous infections taking over the body in just a few hours.
I have to relate to you what happened to my dog when I was trying to heal her sores that were on her body.
Just before bedtime I washed my dog and she had about 15 infectious spots on her belly. The vet told me to shave the area so that it would stay dry. So I took my clippers and shaved the area as he had told me to do.
My mistake was not giving her another bath in medicated shampoo after the clipping. Once the skin has been shaved the sores becomes open to infection. Bacteria gets into the shaved skin and just makes it multiply with sores all over the body. I counted the spots and gave up after 100. It was overwhelming to have to medicate each one of these sores on her skin..
The next morning her entire torso was covered in hundreds of spots. I had started out with 15 and now there were hundreds. I immediately gave her a bath and smeared Panalog cream over her entire stomach area from the chest all the way to her tail.
I was amazed how fast the cream worked and so were glad that it did.
These infections are so viral.
These infections should be treated by your vet because he will probably prescribe an antibiotic, either orally or topically
Dog infections often develop in moist warm areas. Under matted hair is a perfect place for bacteria to find a home and multiply.
The areas that seems to attract the bacteria is the tail area, under the legs where they meet the body, the belly and stomach area, the genitals and around the mouth.
What all these have in common is that they are moist areas which encourages the bacteria to thrive. Keep these areas dry and the bacteria does not have a perfect place to grow.
These sores make your canine miserable. They itch and hurt. Putting a veterinary antibiotic cream on each sore helps soothe them and they will feel better.
Staph Infections are sometimes very hard to eradicate.
Sometimes dogs lick the sores which keep them moist, which is what you don't want, and then it spreads the sores to other parts of the body. With my terriers they have very long and dense coats. When the allergies are their worse, in Spring, I usually shave down my dogs so that I can see where the problem is on and take care of it. Sometimes, not all the time, but at times there will be some dogs that nothing will help except baths and antibiotics that only work for a little while on.
I do not like to use Elizabethan collars but at times it will be your only choice.
There are some dogs that develop an resistance to all antibiotics. The vet will usually prescribe Cyclosporine or Prednisone along with an antibiotic. These two very powerful drugs can help your dog but can also cause liver damage so be sure to talk to your vet about the side effects of Cyclosporine on your dog.
Another dog sores are really yeast infections which you can read more about here . Yeast can over take your dog's skin, leading to more and more outbreaks of sores. Your vet can give you meds for the yeast but the main thing is to keep your dog's skin in the correct ph so that the yeast can't live in that environment. Dogs with yeast allergies show signs of reddish fur on their paws and chin.
Read more about sores and staph infections, continued here.