Category Archives: Dermatology

The dermatologists harp on this, and for good reason.  When a dog has a skin problem, you frequently see a very non-specific outward appearance.  If he's been scratching it, it just looks like it's been scratched a lot.  You will probably see hair loss, flaking skin, redness, crusts, scabs, maybe some pimples.  This will be […]

  The itching pet is one of the most common problems that we see.  Sometimes the cause is not obvious to the owner, but yields readily to a thorough examination.  For instance, we commonly find unsuspected flea populations on animals with long, dark coats.  Young puppies with bad itching are most likely to have Sarcoptic mange ("Scabies"). […]

This is a bottle of Depo Medrol.  It is one of the more commonly used long-acting cortisone injectable products.  One of the more common uses is to give long-lasting relief from allergic itching.  Allergies are a malfunction of the body's defenses, so you give enough cortisone to suppress the body's defenses a little. I'm not […]

Some time back I wrote a post on demodectic mange.  I had a great "before" picture, but the case was lost to follow-up.  This is a different case, and this time I do have the "before" and the "after" pictures. Shadow is a youngster who suffered a grievous injury to her left front leg.  After […]

As pocket pets go, the hamster can be a little demanding.  If not handled regularly, they can become aggressive, and they are great escape artists.  On the other hand, they can be mighty cute. Little "Reighty" here had two skin tumors.  One looked  like an inflamed wart, and the other looked almost exactly like someone […]

"He smells like a dog", the client says.  Being as he is a dog, this doesn’t seem to me to be a problem, technically.   If, being a dog, he smelled like, say, a camel — now that would be a problem.  Of course, this is not the truly stinky dog. Every dog has a tendency […]

Warning: This post describes disgusting bodily functions. When I was starting veterinary school, I visualized myself as "the boy-wonder equine surgeon".  I really thought that I’d be doing nothing but horse-work.   Not only do horses not have anal sacs, at that time I wasn’t aware that these particular disgusting anatomical structures even existed.  Had I […]