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The best in health, wellness, and positive training from America’s leading dog experts

Skin Allergies

Bee Products Have a Special Meaning for Dogs

Bees may sting, but they create some of the world's most valuable, versatile products. Honey, bee pollen, royal jelly, beeswax, propolis, and even the venom from bee stings are all touted for their human health benefits – and many experts say that dogs derive the same advantages.

Canine Allergies and Your Dog’s Health

or anything else.üBonnie's sores healed when her owner noticed her eating fresh cleavers, and started giving the dog supplemental forms of the herb.

Ways to Use Lemon Balm on Dogs

Next month, on May 6, the first day of National Herb Week, lemon balm (Melissa officinalis) becomes Herb of the Year for 2007. A dog-friendly plant with a distinctive lemon-mint fragrance and flavor, lemon balm is best known as a nervine, a calming herb that soothes and relaxes. It's also a digestive aid that neutralizes gas in the stomach and intestines.

The Many Benefits of Calendula for Your Dog

The world of herbal medicine offers hundreds of choices to consider when treating your dog. Some are rather obscure; almost inaccessible to anyone but those who are connected to an exclusive, exotic source. Yet others are within such easy reach that they are often overlooked, considered mundane and useless simply by their abundance. After all, who would think first of the dandelions growing along the back fence when looking for an herbal approach to a rare and inoperable cancer?

Yeast Infections in Dogs

Thirty years ago, even though the systemic yeast infection called candidiasis had already become an epidemic, practically no one knew anything about it. Even now conventional medicine tends to ignore the problem, but word has spread among health-conscious consumers. If you haven't had a candida yeast infection yourself, you know dozens of people who have and dozens of dogs as well.
bermese mountain dogs high risk for hot spots

Hot Spots and Lick Granulomas

Your dog has a weeping, oozing wound on her leg or a yucky red blob on the top of her head, and at first you wonder how she injured herself. But if you've been around the dog-care block, you realize that it isn't a cut or scrape. That gooey mess might be diagnosed as pyotraumatic dermatitis, wet eczema, or a Staphylococcus intermedius infection, but it's what everyone calls a hot spot.

Correcting Canine Skin Problems

When the dog’s skin is healthy, we don’t give it a second thought. But when it is out of whack – greasy, itchy, smelly, flaky, bumpy, or raw – it becomes the center of attention for our dogs, and us, too. There is no more miserable dog than one with a serious skin problem. The skin is the epithelial and connective tissue covering of the body. Skin is also referred to as the “integument,” a term meaning “a covering or investment.” Cutaneous is also used to describe the skin.
Canine allergies can cause a variety of skin conditions and other ailments.

Understanding Canine Allergies

Over the years I have treated literally thousands of animal patients for allergic problems, using both Western and alternative medicine methods. The more I think I know about allergies, the more I read and learn about them, the more confused I get. Nothing I have tried therapeutically works with all my patients; some patients get better with hardly any effort on my part; others finally respond to my third or fourth treatment protocol (or 9th or 10th); and some never respond, no matter what I try.
remedies for itchy skin in dogs

Home Remedies For Your Dog’s Skin Inflammation

long soak with a towel infused with an herbal skin rinse.üA juniper decoction is easy to make and very effective for treating a dog whose skin problem is severe

Preventing Hot Spots

Upon waking up one morning many years ago, I greeted Mandy, my six-year-old tri-color Collie, who slept beside my bed. As I leaned over to stroke her luxurious black coat, I gasped. There was an angry, oozing sore the size of a grapefruit on the outside of her right hind leg. It was cherry red, inflamed, and looked incredibly painful. I was horrified. I worked at a humane society at the time. This looked like the kind of wound we would investigate an irresponsible owner for, for not providing proper care and attention! I was sure it hadn't been there the night before. What had happened to my dog?

Change of Dog Food Stops Seizures

On April Fool's Day 1996, my soon-to-be-husband took me to get a puppy. We already had one dog, Ladybird, but she was getting older and we felt a young friend would encourage her to be more playful. We also hoped Ladybird would pass on some of her fine qualities to the puppy. We drove out of town to a place where people play paintball. There were more than a dozen young dogs running around, and the owner told us to take our pick. One young female seemed to want my attention more than any of the others, and I fell in love with her pretty face. We took her home and named her Cheyenne.

Mangy Mutts?

What is demodectic mange caused by? Why are Boxers so susceptible to it? How can all these puppies be affected by it when I know for a fact that none of their parents or even grandparents ever had demodectic mange? How would you recommend treating it in an older dog, and how would you treat it in puppies?

Latest Blog

Rehoming Your Old Dog

Rehoming a dog due to loss of income, loss of a home, or another extreme circumstance is understandable. In other scenarios it's less clear if rehoming is the best option.