A bagful of skin problems
I brought Axel to the vet last Saturday to get this fungal growth on his right cheek checked. We were attended to after waiting for about 20 minutes by this young vet whom I think is probably fresh from school as I have an impression she didn't know what she was doing. She then called in a more experienced (and louder) lady vet to take a look at Axel.
The first thing this vet said upon seeing Axel was "Ahhhh...a pug, a bagful of skin problems". She appeared very knowledgeable about dogs and I appreciated her lengthy explanation on pugs and their skin problems. She checked Axel and said that Axel actually has good skin as compared to most pugs. However he did have minor fungal growth in his ears, his cheek and paws.
She told us that pugs are very prone to skin diseases.. and there are many reasons how these skin problems come about. Some could be from external factor, some from allergies and some from "internal system attack" within a pug's body. The 3rd reason I mentioned would be the most serious one as they will need to administer steroids if that happens.
Anyhow we will need to find out the reason, by eliminating the possibilities one by one... from the least serious ones to the more serious ones. She took some sample from Axel's fungal patch and ran some tests and couldn't find anything. So now, we need to monitor to see whether it's because of food allergies. I told her Axel is on lamb & rice diet now. She then explained to me that in terms of food, the following are the order from which dog's are most sensitive to, to the least sensitive:
The "Extended Chicken" is a processed chicken meat which the body does not recognise as chicken. Canggih leh.... and it is really expensive!! It cost about RM120 for 3kg pack!!!!
Anyway she said it's okay to maintain Axel on lamb and rice for the moment, but have to stop all food with wheat and beef. This means no usual dog biscuits, dog chews etc that are made from such ingredients. I bought Axel some baby carrots as treats after that.
I also asked her about Axel's constant tearing in his eyes. She said it's normal as pug's fold sometimes irritates the eye. The way to solve that is to get the fold removed. We immediately said No! and I added "well...maybe we will buy him goggles".
The vet prescribed some antiseptic wash and cream for the fungal growth and some oily stuff (dunno what's that!) to take. I also bought Malaseb which is the medicated shampoo for dogs and cats.
Total=RM101. Much more expensive than any of my own visits to the doctors! Not cheap to maintain a dog, eh?
