Furunculosis in dogs??
Hi:
My 9-month old staffie mix has had some skin thing going on for probably a month or more. At first we thought she had a bug bite on her eyebrow, and we just watched it for awhile. It was swollen, and she seemed to be losing the hair above her eye. When it didn't resolve after a couple of weeks, we took her to the vet who did a couple of skin scrapes to check for demodex, which was negative. She put her on cephalexen, vetadryl, and a neosporin-like ointment. After a week, it looked a lot worse. It had spread across her eyebrow area, and she had 3 or 4 bumps. This time the vet said she thought it was a furunculosis--a deep-seated infection. She put her on a stronger antibiotic and prednisone, and told us to continue with the vetadryl and ointment. After a week it looked like the rash was starting to spread to beneath the eye. She did more skin scrapes (still negative for demodex,) and told us to use Monostat in case it was fungal, to continue with the stronger antibiotic and prednisone, and prescribed a different ointment. Today, three days later, it looks quite a bit worse, so I took her to a different vet who also thinks it's a furunculosis. She increased the dose of prednisone from 20 mg/day to 30, and gave her an additional two weeks of the antibiotic (enrofloxacin.)
Since it doesn't seem to itch (or at least not too badly,) she has pretty much ruled out allergies. And says demodex is also very unlikely, due to the negative skin scrapes. They tried to do a needle aspiration today, but the poor pup was having none of that, so they gave up. They are culturing for ringworm.
Has anyone else had any experience with something like this?
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