Referral Animal Skin Hospital

04/12/2024

Yeast or Malassezia are a natural part of your pets skin flora. They are meant to be there, however, pets with skin disease are prone to overgrowths.

This overgrowth of yeast increases your pets' itch level and can cause hair loss and crusting. You may also notice that your pets' regular anti-itch medications aren't as effective.

Malassezia are easy to treat with either medicated shampoo, ear drops or oral capsules. Controlling the inflammation associated with skin disease is also an important part of controlling yeast overgrowths.

02/12/2024

We hear "smells ye**ty" "smells like a fungal infection" all the time, from both owners and referring vets. But we're here to clear it up once and for all that you can not smell yeast.

There is a smell that comes with some skin diseases, and that's a combination of the overproduction of oils in the coat and inflamed skin.

If you tuned into our posts last week, you'll already know that the only way to diagnose an infection (or dysbiosis, if we're being technical) is to take cytology

29/11/2024

Cytology is a quick and easy test that lets us identify microbes on the skin and in the ears.
This is how we confirm a secondary infection, not by how something looks or smells 🦠🦠

Without cytology, we can not determine which antimicrobial to give your pet - remember we've been talking about microbial resistance, so knowing which medication to give is very important.

Sometimes we'll need to take a culture - which is a swab that gets sent to laboratory. The bacteria from this swab is grown, with each species identified and then a range of antimicrobial are tested against each bacteria. This is how we find out if we have resistance.

We will usually recommend a culture when:
🦠 Your pet has had a recent course of antimicrobials and we are still seeing high numbers of microbes on cytology
🦠 Your pet has high numbers of microbes on cytology and they have had lots of treatment using the same family of antimicrobials
🦠 If we see Rod shaped bacteria on cytology. This type of bacteria is known to be more resistant and a little trickery to treat

26/11/2024

All the little purple dots - like little grape bunches 🍇🍇 - are bacteria.

Some bacteria are normal, but patients with allergies are prone to overgrowthing them. Some of these overgrowths need treating with antibiotics, and each time we use antibiotics, we increase the chances of resistance.

Managing the underlying allergies is the key to less antibiotic usage and minimising antibiotic resistance 🦠

25/11/2024

Last week was antimicrobial resistance awareness week, and it's a problem we are seeing more and more of in the clinic.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) occurs when a microbe (bacteria, viruses, yeast) becomes resistant to the medication. We most commonly see this when bacteria form a resistance to antibiotics.

AMR is a massive concern in both veterinary and human medicine.

Stay tuned over the next week as we talk about ways to minimise the risk of AMR

22/11/2024

Diet trials are hardwork but just remember they aren't forever!

The goal of the elimination diet trial is to eliminate all other protein sources for 6-8weeks. This means no other dog food, dog treats, human food, or cat food.

Here are 5 tips to help make a diet trial a bit easier 🥩🐾

19/11/2024

The only reliable way to diagnose a food allergy is to perform a strict elimination diet trial.

We can either use a hydrolyzed novel protein diet (we love Royal Canin Anallergenic or Hypoallergenic) or a home cooked novel protein diet that has been balanced by a veterinary nutritionist (also love the team at VNG ❤️)

During this elimination trial, the pets' immune system is getting a break from the proteins it's previously been exposed to. This means we see itching stop over the course of this diet.

It's really important that itching, inflammation, and secondary infections are controlled throughout the elimination trial. Otherwise, it can seem like there was no response to the diet.

Diet trials are one of the hardest things we ask you as owners to do! Keep an eye out for our next post where we share some tips to make it easier 👏

17/11/2024

We know lots of tests on the internet look helpful, but these results are unreliable in the diagnosis of food allergy.

The only proven way to work out if food is a factor in your pets itch, is to perform a strict elimination diet trial.

Stay tuned over the next week to learn more about these!

14/11/2024

Food allergies happen when the immune system overreacts to certain foods 🥩🍖

The most common culprits are proteins like chicken and beef or dairy. This is only because these are common ingredients our pets get fed.

We often hear owners report the itching only after changing the diet, but for the immune system to become hypersensitive, it needs to be exposed to these allergens over time.

Food allergies are most commonly seen in dogs under 1 year old. Cats can develop food allergies at any age

13/11/2024

Dani's Kip is famous 😍
We have a couple of calendars left at the clinic for anyone who wants to support the wonderful work Retired Working Dogs NZ Charitable Trust do 🐕🐾

Our calendar girl for November is Kip, who got her second chance at life and is living the pet life dream!
"We adopted Kip after only meeting once. She's the most loyal, soft natured and golden hearted gal. Her favourite place, other than the couch, is the beach, where she'll run for miles even though she's only got three legs now. Kip is absolutely one in a million, my soul dog."
Buy a 2025 calendar - our biggest source of income - to help rehome our Retired Working Dogs: https://retiredworkingdogs.org.nz/product/2025-rwd-calendar/

13/11/2024

Food allergies are a common reason for pets to be itchy 🐶 These allergies can make pets itchy in the same places as other allergies, which can make the diagnosis tricky. However, we often find these pets have gastrointestinal concerns too, like vomiting and diarrhea.

06/11/2024

Hairy ears often get the blame for causing ear infections, but it's just not true!

Allergies (atopic dermatitis) are often the reason for an infection, but hairy ear canals can make an infection worse.

Grass seeds and masses in the canal can also cause infection.

31/10/2024

Even though pets with atopic dermatitis (allergies) have skin barriers that don't work as well as they should, the good news is we can do things to help restore it.

🧡 Regular bathing with ceramide rich shampoos helps to restore moisture.
🧡 Incorporating a leave on conditioner into your bathing routine provides the skin barrier with essential nutrients and moisture.
🧡 Specially formulated diets high in fatty acids and other nutrients help to rebuild the skin barrier from the inside out.
🧡 Supplementation with fish oils for any pets that can't be moved onto a skin diet.

By working to restore the skin barrier, we are helping to decrease the frequency of secondary infections, decrease itching and allergen absorption through the skin.

31/10/2024

When the skin gets exposed repeatedly to inflammation, through itching and infection, a change called Lichenification occurs.

This is when the skin becomes thick and often turns black. This is sometimes also referred to as elephant skin because of how thick it feels!

This change is irreversible, but sometimes, the skin can be softened by using topical steroids.

Have you seen lichenification before?

29/10/2024

The skin is the largest (and most important 😉) organ in the body. It does a few jobs, but one is to protect the body from external challenges.

21/10/2024

That's right! Our pets can be allergic to natural fibers.

Cotton is one of our 52 allergens that we test for on our intradermal allergy test. It is often included in our patients' immunotherapy since many pets have daily exposure to this fiber.