Help or Advice for Sickly Gordon

[TJV]

Hi everyone! I’ve posted this already on my blog page, but I’m hoping if I put it out into the forum maybe others may see this and have some advice.
I'm hoping someone out there can help solve some health issues I'm having with my 1 1/2 year old male Gordon. The beginning of July this year I noticed my Gordon's tail was losing hair, he had a "rat tail" appearance. I took him to the vet and we did a thyroid test, which came back negative. We tried special shampoos & sprays which had no effect on him. He started losing more hair on his tail and started getting a patchy tummy. I’ve put in a few pictures I took about a month ago of his skin & lack of hair, his skin & hair loss is much worse now.

As of today, he has no hair on his stomach, no hair on the underside of his neck, very little hair on his back, thighs & tail. His skin went from being dull & flaky to "dead" feeling & scabby. He has small raised red spots throughout his body (no they are not any kind of mite). He also, (since he was a puppy) has battled very loose & frequent BM's, as of late this has gotten worse.

I've switched him over from "Purina One" to a couple of other special diet foods, The last food we tried was "Solid Gold, Wolf King" which is a soy, corn & wheat free dog food with "novelty" protein (bison & salmon). We are now seeing a holistic doctor and are feeding a cooked chicken & rice diet, while slowly adding in other natural ingredients. The vet did indicate possible food allergy. I saw no difference with the dry dog food changes. We are seeing a little improvement in his BM’s with the cooked diet. The vet tried him on prednisone, after a month of no change, we stopped the prednisone. The vet would like to try a gluten free diet. He tested negative for EPI (a pancreatic disease). The vet would also like to possibly test for Addison's disease.

I'm also very concerned for his weight. He lost 4 pounds in about 5 weeks. He is approx. 27" tall and at the moment weights 70 pounds. At his maximum weight he was 78 pounds. His father is 80 and his litter mate sister is around 72 pounds. The breeder believes he should be upper 70's/low 80's. He tires very easily and gets "stumbly" when tired. He sleeps like a rock, he sleeps so hard it is difficult waking him. He also does the "pica" deal. He's a rock eater, he's eaten 22 rocks so far (none over the last 6 months). He won’t stop eating our toilette paper and is obsessed with eating the dirt from our potted plants and the dirt in our yard. He used to wear a muzzle to stop him from eating rocks, he's had 1 surgery and many vet visits to induce vomiting to remove rocks. He's consistently hungry and is fed more than enough, yet he is skin & bones. He was getting approx. 5 cups of dry dog food a day. Now he is eating 30oz a day of chicken plus 3 cups a day of brown rice.

I don't believe he's getting the nutrients he needs since his BM's are so loose & frequent. However, his stools have been less frequent on the chicken diet. I've started him on a product called "Add Life" by Wysong. I could go into much more detail, but this is my Gordon in a nutshell. Yet, he's an extremely happy dog. Does anyone have any ideas or recommendations? My vet is at a loss and so is the breeder we got him from. Thank you, TJV

[Vlatka]

I'm sorry I can't really help you. I think you should continue to feed your dog natural food, changes on the skin would appear much later. Skin is the first to show signs of illness, but the last to show improvement.
The change on the tail looks like "tail gland hyperplasia", but I have no idea why he has no hair on his belly and neck.

[Egle]

Can't it be something like hypodermic tick (i don't know what its original name)?

[Kim]

Well our first bitch had also problems with her skin. But where she was living first it was not so clean and i think she had the wrong food. Because the first owner was giving her also rumen and she had an allergie for cow meat.
But when see came to us we gave turkey rice this because we got this tip from somebody. Before we triedeverything before. But i don't know anymore from witch compagny it was the food. After that sombody gave her a peace of dry cow rumen it started all over again. It was just if she was on fire. Over her hole body she had pimples and she was biting her self. Al her hair was shining so you could look to her skin. But later on we gave lamb and rice dieet food and her skin became clean again. See only could have lamb rice food.

[Cassiopea]

My first gordon setter's was hypodermic tick and he looks that:

[Kim]

Well i understand now what it maybe could be. I dont know if you can get it in the USA but here we can get a stuff and that's realy poison. Normaly they wash the sheaps with it. It's very old that kind off poison but i know the results from it and it will kill everything on the skin.

[Vlatka]

By hypodermic tick do you mean demodectic mange (demodex)?
It can be cured with stinky "IVERMECTIN" baths. Treatment is long, but effective.
But, I'm sure the vet already checked the skin for demodex.

[Cassiopea]

Yes, I was talking about demodex.

[TJV]

Briley tested positive for demodex when he was only 10 months old and was treated for that. Because of this, demodex was one of the first things I questioned to the vet. We ran a test and it came back negative this time.