Spots, scabs & itching

2 year old Labrador has spots on stomach and scabs on her back and sides which is causing hair loss. Steroid tablets worked until dosage reduced. Any other natural options? Any way of finding out what’s causing them?

Hello - It sounds as though you need to find the cause of the itching.  Steroids are sometimes used as a repeated short-term anti-itching treatment (increasingly less these days, as more is becoming understood about long-term side effects), but if the trigger for the itching is still there, then when the steroids wear off, the itching will continue.  Fleas, for example, cause itching in dogs - they respond to steroids because steroids reduce itching, but if the fleas are still there when the steroids wear off, the dog will continue to scratch.  Some dogs have allergies to fleas, so a brief encounter with a flea belonging to someone else in the outdoors can be enough to cause a problem.  However, it doesn't have to be fleas - dogs can have allergies to no end of things, from pollens in the air to household products - so sometimes it can be hard to get to the bottom of the route cause of an allergy. Where allergies are thought to be the cause, there may also be non-steroidal treatments available.    Beside allergies, pain including abdominal pain (e.g. pancreatitis / arthritis), mites, ambient dryness etc. are all worth considering.  If the hair-loss (rather than itching) becomes the most obvious feature, there may be a separate list of differentials (possible causes) for that.

In short then, itching is a symptom - not an underlying disease - which can be temporarily controlled using steroids (which have side effects).  However, without trying to identify the underlying cause of the itching, it is likely to continue when the steroid wears off, unless the pet was itching only for a short-lived reason (e.g. an insect bite) in the first place.  Good questions for your vet are 'what could be causing this itching?'  'How can we find out which cause is most likely?' and 'if my dog does need anti-itching treatments, what are the advantages and disadvantages involved for each possible treatment and which would you recommend?'  In the UK these days, it is quite uncommon for steroids to be the drug of choice.

long-term.