Hello everyone. Long time reader/lurker, first time poster.
We've had our dog, Drew, since he was eight weeks old for around 8 months now. Starting around two weeks ago, I noticed that his paw had this unusual 'bald spot' when we went to Northern California (we live in Southern California) to visit my boyfriend's parents. We took it as nothing and assumed it was a scrape from jumping off the car or scraping his paw from running around.
We've been back in SoCal for about a week now, but two days ago, I saw that there was another unusual bald spot above his left eye, it could have been there since . I sort of freaked out and my boyfriend said it was nothing to worry about. Today, I checked the scrape above his eye and it seemed to have gotten worse. The bald spot on his paw doesn't seem to have changed or gotten better.
There are only two possible culprits that I can think of that could be the reason.
It could have been an allergic reaction to something something he ate or been exposed to in NorCal. Or could he all of a sudden developed an allergic reaction to his food that we've been feeding him for the past couple of months since we're assuming it might be the reason why his ear smells so bad. It could also be the new treats (Newman's Own Organics Dog Treats - Turkey and Sweet Potato) that he had, or even the table scraps that he found lying on the floor at my boyfriend's parent's house. But if it the dog food, it might give us a good reason switch to Wellness or another similar brand.
My main assumption is the dog shampoo though, we forgot our own shampoo at home so our only alternative was to use Hartz shampoo, which wase only twice. I've read from my Google searches that Hartz shampoo has caused hair loss. If this is true, is there another alternative we could have used, such as Head and Shoulder (lol), which reminds me, our dog as really bad dandruff too, would there be any way to solve that too. :\
Err... sorry for the super long post.