Scales of Justice

Down in the pasterns can result from imbalance of nutrients, particularly calcium and phosphorus ratios. If you are feeding mostly meat as you say and only one cup of dry food you may not have the balance right. If I were you I would cut out meat and feed only balanced high quality dry food for about 6 weeks and then reassess the pasterns. You may get an improvement from doing this.

Your pups diet does not sound a balanced one to me. Eukanuba puppy food is balanced itself and with the extra meat the diet would be higher in phosphorus than it should be for a growing pup.

My thoughts on pale gums - blood loss or pain. Either way I would get blood tests. She may be anaemic which would explain why she is feeling flat!

That depends whether he's off lead in an off leash area. If its not an off leash area there is a problem.

To crate train her you must lock her in for short periods, not let her come and go from it as she pleases - that comes later. Select a time when she is ready to sleep and give her a command like "time for bed". Give her a treat by placing it in the crate. Allow her to follow your hand into the crate and lock the crate behind her. Let her whinge if she wants but hopefully as she will be tired she will decide to lay down in the crate and sleep. Let her out as soon as she wakes and take her to the toilet. Once she has had this discipline she will willingly want to go and sleep in the crate.

Charli73, I can't recommend enough that you get her a crate - one for inside and one for outside. Your puppy has security issues and she needs a "den" to climb into when you are not there. Start her sleeping in one inside. Cover the crate with blankets so that it is like a cave. Do the same outside. When you go out - leave a big marrow bone inside the crate you leave outdoors for her to crawl into and have something to amuse her and take her mind off the fact that you have left. She will be secure inside the crate with her bone and will probably fall asleep after she has gnawed on the bone for the first hour or so.

If a young dog which has suffered demodex mites is not able to get on top of the demodex mites within a reasonable amount of time, the condition which you describe ensues, due to the immune system being compromised and the dog will rarely recover fully from demodex once this happens. What you are describing with the bloody scabs and hair loss and even the other symptoms etc. fits the scenario. The demodex mites burrow deep into the tissues and once the scabs and thick roughened areas are present this means that the demodex mites have gone into the lower layers and may not show up on upper skin scrapings. The dog's immune system is probably already permanently compromised. I doubt that this dog will recover if it is this condition. Dogs which become compromised with demodex sometimes need to be put to sleep when they get really bad. The condition is much about the immune system as it is about mites. Get a second opinion.

Cowanbree, Try to get the fresh aloe vera plant from a nursery (shouldn't be expensive). Slice lengthways enough of a leaf that you can lay it open like a bandage and wrap it onto the site with either a bandage or elastoplast. I don't believe the stuff you buy from the shops will do as good a job as the fresh plant. Aloe vera has unique properties which many plants don't have - just can't remember the substance name - it starts with an 'x' which help healing.

The gel healed it back to normal within three months. When she was first bitten, the area started to get bigger and it was raised up slightly then within days it started to go black and we thought she would lose her leg. (It was on her foreleg between the elbow and pastern joint.) It got blacker and blacker. She had antibiotics and it still didn't heal. We were told there wasn't much we could do about it. I decided to cut fresh aloe vera plant and wrap it onto the wound and within about two to three days it appeared to improve slightly. Someone told us paw paw cream was better, so we stopped the aloe vera and started to use paw paw cream. It got worse again. Stopped using paw paw cream and started up the aloe vera poultices (wrapped fresh plant (sliced through the middle) straight onto the site and left it for a day - changing poultices daily). Within a week it had improved markedly and within 3 months the hair was growing back. It became totally normal after a few months.

Cowanbree, I've had two cases of gangrene in the past - one was a damaged bone in the foot where the bone was sharp and was penetrating into the tissue and the other was a white tip spider bite which caused the area to go black and become gangrenous. The first case was fixed with surgery and antibiotics and the other case was fixed with poultices of aloe vera on the skin. I'm not sure whether there would be any relevance to your dog's problem but I wouldn't take the problem too lightly if it doesn't start to look better quite quickly with antibiotics I would probably be considering a second opinion as the toes may need to be amputated. Gangrene can spread throughout the whole body if left untended. If you didn't actually see the injury happen, it may not be an injury at all but poor circulation due to old age.

Can you post any more information about the particular problem. I may be able to help but need to know if your problem is relevant to mine

Any inspected meat for human consumption will be free of hydatid flukes so it is safe.

Hydatid tapeworms don't come from fleas. They come from uninspected offal or muscle meat which may be infected with the hydatid flukes. You should not worry about hydatids if you feed only dry food, but if you feed meat or meat products or offal then hydatid tapeworm wormer should be on the agenda.

I agree with Shmoo. Stop leaving food down for him. He is playing on you psychologically to hang out for whatever he fancies to eat. You need to deal with him by putting the food down for him, and unlike Shmoo who would give him 20 mins, I would only give him 10 mins to eat whatever YOU have selected for him and when he turns up his nose at it, take it away. Let him starve! You will find it will be harder on you than on him to see him starve. Let him go hungry (totally hungry if necessary) for as long as it takes until he eats what YOU have selected for him. I can almost guarantee it will only take a few days before he eats heartily whatever you put down, BUT YOU MUST BE STRONG ENOUGH not to weaken to his whims. It is for his own good, as he should not live on cat food.

I wouldn't think that cat food alone would be all that beneficial for a growing puppy. Puppies have much higher needs for minerals and other nutrients for bone growth and the larger the pup, the more exact the formulation needs to be to avoide bone deformities. I would certainly not feed a puppy on cat food alone, although an addition of cat food to an already balanced diet would be quite fine.

I agree, I would be getting an x-ray of the elbow.

Requirements for ligament damage - REST, REST AND MORE REST, followed by monitored exercise (possibly on lead only at first)

Its not the protein and fat levels you have to worry about so much with a puppy (although you would not want excessive levels of either) but the mineral balance that matters. Calcium and phosphorus must be in the correct ratios and some adult foods are not so precise. (Also if a large breed, glucosamine/chondroitin additives are desirable to protect joints while growing unless you are going to substitute it yourself) Most puppy foods accommodate nutrients for the growth stages (requirements for bones and joints).

Could be due to coccidiosis which can stay fairly undetected in the bowel of infected subjects but only become a problem when the dog is under stress (ie. in boarding kennels or changing home).

Not sure about small breeds, but we have put our large breeds on adult food as early as 8 months without any problems.

I would not use that food on a puppy. I would use a puppy food which has been formulated especially for puppy growth. Some adult foods do not have the correct balances necessary for puppy growth.

Magnesium tablets relax muscle cramps and relax the nervous system. Your dog may actually have an electrolyte deficiency which is causing muscle spasms (which the magnesium will help). You could also purchase an electrolyte replacer (which greyhound people use for their racing greyhounds). You can get these from any pet supplier.

Three dogs together unsupervised is not a good scenario at the best of times as two can "gang" up on one. I would suspect that they had had some issues between themselves, and bearing that in mind, I would be very carefuly leaving these three together in the future. It might not happen today, or tomorrow or next week, but if they have had issues of some sort in the past, it will rear its ugly head again in the future and you might not be so lucky next time.

Optimus, Dimmitrol is a heartworm preventative so why would you want to double dose your dog by using Revolution as well? You wouldn't use two intestinal wormers at once so why would you consider using two heartworm preventatives together?

Good combination. I would not suppliment with Dimmitrol (unnecessary)