Dog skin conditions can be baffling to diagnose and even more baffling to solve.
Yet, they're extremely important as they're irritating and painful to your dog and can really impact his or her quality of life.
Skin conditions in dogs can range from little hot spots to the entire body, hair falling out and skin turning black.
What causes them? Anything or everything from fleas to food allergies, grass and plant allergies and sometimes more serious internal organ issues.
Once your dog has a skin issue, you'll have to work hard to alleviate it.
If your dog's itching or you notice small patches of bare skin or clumps of hair in the house, take him or her to the vet immediately to begin the process of solving what's causing the issue.
It's often a process of elimination, as different irritants can cause similar skin problems.
The first thing your vet will probably do is check for fleas, since fleas are a common cause of dog skin conditions and they're easy to diagnose and fairly easily addressed.
If that's the case, then your vet will recommend a treatment program that'll kill the eggs in addition to as the adults.
And your vet will tell you that you'll not only need to treat your dog's bedding, but possibly the whole house as well, because the nasties could be breeding in many places.
If fleas aren't the culprit, an allergy is your next stop in getting to the cause of your buddy's skin problems.
One common type of allergy that affects dog's skin is a food allergy.
Dogs can become allergic to something in their food - wheat, corn, dairy, chicken and soy are common things behind allergies in dogs.
In order to rule out a food allergy, you must systematically remove the ingredients that you feel might be causing it.
For example, if you think your dog is allergic to wheat, then switch to a food that has no wheat in it - if the skin problem goes away after a few months then you have your answer.
Of course, this is time consuming and if you want to cut some corners you can buy foods that are non-allergenic and have most of the offending ingredients removed.
Yeast infections, or even bacterial infections can be the cause of skin conditions in dogs as well.
A yeast infection is very itchy and has a greasy appearance and bad odor.
A bacterial infection might look like small bumps on the skin.
Your vet can do tests to determine if this is the cause.
One of my dogs Archie has extremely sensitive skin, is much more sensitive than my others dogs, and terribly allergic to grass.
Recently his skin allergy became so bad we took him back to the vet, who did a swab on his tummy.
The vet found yeast spores on his skin.
What? How? We believe they've come from backyard grass - but yeast? That warrants investigation! We now have a special shampoo to wash him with, and antihistamines to only give him only if his allergy flares up.
(Hopefully it won't).
We'll see how we go.
Dog skin conditions take time and patience to overcome but it's well worth it for the overall health and wellness of your dog.
In order to stop any skin problem from getting too far, do take your dog to your Veterinarian at the first sign of any skin condition.