Can anxiety or stress cause skin conditions in my dog?

I wouldn't answer that in a way where I would say it could cause skin conditions, but I think it can exacerbate skin conditions. As we all know, stress is a real thing, and it is a factor when it comes to our immune systems and how they function. So an animal that is continually stressed will probably be more likely to have a weaker immune system, which means things like staph or fungal disease have a much better chance of gaining a foothold and causing an issue. So can it cause skin problems? Probably not, but can it make an existing skin problem much worse? Absolutely, yeah.

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.