hairloss in 6 months old black lab

by joydeep mondal
(new delhi,india)

hii

i have a 6 month old black labrador named smokey..he is mostly on a mixed diet of home and dog food to make sure he gets all needed ingredients.... and he is surely healthy and fit, energetic and friendly.

for the past few days he has been losing quite a few hair...is it a serious problem?? he has been suffering from a skin disease for sometime wherein he has red scaly patches on his underskin,,..please suggest what should be done..






Hi Joydeep
I'm not sure exactly what's going on with your puppy, or what diagnosis has been made of the skin condition he has. Plus, I'm not a veterinarian so I can't give you a professional opinion, but I will do my best to help.

Red, irritated skin and hair loss in puppies and dogs can be caused by allergies (such as dog food allergies or an allergy to flea saliva etc). As your dog is eating both a home-made diet and commercial dog food, it's possible that he's reacting to one of many different ingredients.

There's also a skin condition called Mange, which is a parasitic skin problem and it can cause canine hair loss. You can learn more about this on my Mange In Dogs page.

I'm afraid the only way to get an accurate answer is to have your dog examined by your veterinarian to make sure he doesn't have Mange or other parasites, or an infection.

If you want to see if he's allergic to a particular dog food ingredient you'll need to start feeding him only foods he has never eaten before (but it needs to be well-balanced for his needs). Do this only for about 6 weeks and see if the symptoms improve. If they do, then you can either simply continue this diet, or gradually re-introduce one food at a time until you find out what is causing the problems.

Hope this helps. Best of luck with your puppy.