[Bltroy88]

Hello, I have a 1.5 year old yellow lab and about a month and a half ago she developed a ring of missing fur on each side of her ribs. She has no itching or shows no sign of pain and only the ring of fur is missing yet there are patches of fur still on the inside. We took her to the vet and they said it could be fleas or mange (however she was very certain it wasn’t fungal due to no patches of fur missing only a ring). We are going to take her to a different vet but has anyone ever seen this before?

 

[LeoRose]

I've not seen anything quite like that. What kind of testing did your vet do? At the very least, they should have done a skin scrape to check for mange and examined the spots under a black light to see if there was any fluorescence indicative of a fungal infection.

 

[Bltroy88]

I've not seen anything quite like that. What kind of testing did your vet do? At the very least, they should have done a skin scrape to check for mange and examined the spots under a black light to see if there was any fluorescence indicative of a fungal infection.

She did no testing because she said it didn’t look like fungal, she said to she’s never seen it and to see if the new flea meds help if it’s fleas and that if it’s mange the flea meds would cure that as well. It’s been a month and I’ve seen no hair growth so I’m not convinced. But maybe it is fungal. A skin scrape will be the next step then

 

[Lillith]

I actually have seen that before on a lab. An older lab, though. Neither the owner nor the vet had a really great idea what it was, but since it wasn't bothering the dog and it wasn't getting bigger, they just let it be since the dog was getting up there in age. The vet guessed perhaps an old injury where the skin was roughed up (the dog was a hunting dog) and had started to fall out just because of the dog's age, or perhaps just a random rash on the skin and that had cleared up by itself and the hair just never grew back properly.

Have you discussed allergies with your vet? Or perhaps some sort of parasite like ringworm?

 

[Bltroy88]

I actually have seen that before on a lab. An older lab, though. Neither the owner nor the vet had a really great idea what it was, but since it wasn't bothering the dog and it wasn't getting bigger, they just let it be since the dog was getting up there in age. The vet guessed perhaps an old injury where the skin was roughed up (the dog was a hunting dog) and had started to fall out just because of the dog's age, or perhaps just a random rash on the skin and that had cleared up by itself and the hair just never grew back properly.

Have you discussed allergies with your vet? Or perhaps some sort of parasite like ringworm?

thank you, I'm glad someone else has seen this because I was started to get extremely worried however we did originally think ringworm because it’s a circle but the vet was so certain it wasn’t fungal due to the strange hair loss so the only prescribed the flea meds and wanted us to return in a week however hair growth can’t happen in a week so idk. A skin testing will be the next step then, thank you