30 Aug Hot Spots & Your Pet

Hot spots, or acute moist dermatitis (AMD), are wet and scabby lesions that form on your dog’s skin. They start as a bite, sting, or other minor skin irritation, but grow as a dog’s instinct to chew, scratch, and lick the area. This causes the area to develop hair loss, flaking skin, and infection.

Hot spots can develop any time of the year, with any dog breed. If you’ve ever had a dog develop hot spots, you can imagine how painful and annoying they are.

Hot Spot Causes

Hot spots can develop quickly, and often without warning. The most common culprits are flea or insect bites, allergens, irritants, small scratches or wounds. Any of these can cause an outbreak since a dog’s first instinct is to lick the area. Dogs will scratch and chew just to keep themselves occupied, which introduces bacteria into the area and causes inflammation. Dogs with sensitive skin and thick fur are more susceptible to hot spots, so grooming your dog regularly can help reduce the occurrence of hot spots.

Can You Prevent Hot Spots?

If your pup is lucky, they might go without having a hot spot their entire life, while others might have them several times. It’s impossible to prevent hot spots 100%, but there are several things owners can do to help.

Be sure to keep your dog groomed and hair short during the summer months and bathe regularly using medicated shampoo. Be sure to dry your dog completely after baths or playing in water since bacteria loves wet environments. Also, figure out what allergens trigger your dog and try to remove them from the dog’s environment if possible. We recommend if your pet has a hot spot due to leas or ticks, an oral preventative such as Trifexis or Comfortis may work best.

Hot spots can still happen even when you do everything right. Here’s what you need to know if your dog develops hot spots.

Treating Hot Spots

If you feel that your dog may have developed hot spots you should contact us at Central Pet Care. Let us help you determine whether or not you need to bring your animal in for a check up. There are several medicated shampoos available that contain natural, soothing ingredients, such as tea tree and aloe that will help with irritation. One we often recommend is Allergy Hot Spot Foam from Vetri Science. If a shampoo doesn’t relieve the irritation, call us to schedule an appointment and get a treatment plan in place. Once your pet is on the road to recovery, the last step is to try and prevent the it from happening again. When you get i the habit of prevention and treatment, hot spots  will become a thing of the past.

As always we look forward to serving you and thank you for choosing Central Pet Care, where we treat your pets like our family.