Greenies are great. They're great dental treats, but ideally, brushing the teeth will be the gold standard for dental care.

That's a reasonable question. All the veterinarians in our practice are perfectly capable of working through skin cases. We will rarely send a pet to a specialist. That only happens a few times a year. In the vast majority of cases, we can work through it and help you understand what is going on. In most cases, we can help you prevent it from coming back. Many skin conditions don't just go away on their own, and acting quickly to control or cure skin issues can spare your dog discomfort and keep skin issues from worsening.

Hair loss would be something I'd want to see the pet for, as well as inflammation, discomfort, bleeding, and pustules. If it's affecting the pet's quality of life, you definitely need to get in and let us take a look at things. It's not normal for a dog to continuously scratch its ear. It's one thing to scratch an ear one time, and then he goes about his day for the next couple of hours. But anything they're focused on like that, sure, we need to take a look at it.

Just like in us, we get a minor cut or abrasion, we may clean it up a little bit, and it heals fine on itself. A minor little skin infection in a dog will be taken care of by its immune system. But anything even moderate, probably not, and it can be treated and dealt with way quicker than the pet can heal it on its own.

Once again, it's unlikely, but it could. We're a big fan of aloe and oatmeal shampoos, those tend to be very easy on the skin, and we don't see much issue with those. Some of the harsher shampoos and products could cause skin issues. We can see some cats react to some of the topical products severely. So can that happen? Sure. Is it common? No, not really. A lot of people use Johnson's baby shampoo on a puppy, and that's actually very harsh. It strips the skin oils from a puppy, which is why we recommend aloe and oatmeal, which will actually help moisturize the coat, especially if you shampoo frequently. Another thing we see a lot is people using dish detergent because it works for ducks that have been stuck in an oil spill, but it removes the oil on the skin. It's not made for dogs. Pets have a layer of moisture on the surface of the skin or an oily layer which is important in maintaining the health of the skin. Dawn is really good at what it does, but it doesn't do good things to the coat.

Sure, they go in hand in hand. One of the frustrating syndromes we deal with is called lick granulomas, where dogs focus on an area. It's like an obsessive-compulsive disorder, and they will just lick, lick, lick until it causes infection and thickening. Those are very difficult to treat. They can't be surgically removed because you have to remove such a big area of tissue. That is an anxiety issue, and sometimes it's a boredom issue. So we kind of have to get to the bottom of that as we work through this, but anxiety is not a huge cause of skin issues in pets. It's more of a behavioral problem.

Fortunately, very few. There are some, and we call them zoonotic diseases, meaning it's passed from pet to human or human to pet, and everybody's heard of ringworm, which is a fungus that can be transmitted. Not a parasite, not a worm, a fungus. There is a mite called scabies that is transmissible from dogs to pets. It causes extreme itching. Hookworms can be transmitted from pets to people and can cause some skin issues on people. They talk about skin infections and some of these MRSA and that type of thing, but the studies haven't shown that to be nearly as big an issue. Mostly we worry about immunocompromised people. For people who are on chemotherapy or medications for cancer, we do worry a little bit about that, but those are the main things we worry about.