Toby update

(picture of Toby before this medical issue -

laying head through staircase)

Thank you everyone for your concerns in comments,

Here is the email we got back from Toby's school -

"Obviously, Toby has a significant problem around his lips and muzzle. I would suggest he be seen by a vet ASAP. Unfortunately there are many things that may cause this. Sometimes we see this as an allergic reaction to plastic food or water bowls. The first thing I would do is make sure he has no contact with anything plastic, even play toys. We also sometimes see this as an allergic reaction to certain foods or other things he might be coming in contact with. If getting rid of plastic things doesn’t help, we could always try a hypoallergenic diet.

In addition to getting rid of anything plastic, I would do skin scrapings to check for mange mites (demodex) and also do cytology to see if there might be bacteria or fungi causing an infection and treat accordingly. Rarely, we see dogs with bizarre diseases like lupus or pemphigus that can only be diagnosed with skin biopsies. Hope this helps, let me know if I can do anything else."

The vet put him on antibiotics and steroids again. The scraping found no mites. He said that he doesn’t think it’s contagious. He does think that it’s awfully coincidental how this is right on the heels of the eye issue he had just recovered from.

He wasn’t too keen on the idea of the dirty bowls b.c. dogs eat all sorts of things outside and don’t get sick. So though he disregarded that we will still start washing toby’s bowl often. I changed out the 2 huge Tupperware water containers (3 indoor dogs!) for one big stainless steel spaghetti pot of water. 

Toby's trainer