Does Jack Have Allergies?
I know pets can have allergies and I’ve dealt with it first hand growing up with my Turkish Angora cat named Rusty. Of the 20 or allergens out there he was allergic to roughly 12 of them and we had to give him a shot once a month in order to combat the affects. Rusty’s allergies would make him get very itchy around the face and it would also cause very skittish reactions.
With Jack we have noticed over the past year he tends to lick and lightly bite on his legs until the fur is completely wet. It doesn’t seem to get overly red or irritated though so part of me thinks that he is just cleaning himself. However, Jack does not like it when you touch that area and will pull his leg away or even show his teeth a little.
I have been trying to pay close attention to him with the hopes of finding the cause of the allergy. Maybe it’s the type of food he is eating or a treat that we give him causes the itchy legs. There is no particular season of the year that brings it on because he has been doing it routinely. Magoo will literally spend thirty minutes just licking and licking and licking. Sometimes you wish the little guy could talk and just say “Hey! my legs are itchy” or “It’s nothing, I’m just keeping up my appearance”.
All in all it doesn’t look to be causing any damage to his legs, he never draws blood or irritates the area that much. On our next vet visit we’ll bring it up and see what the doc has to say.
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Our yorkie bichon (Emma, 3 years) does the EXACT same thing! We also suspect it’s allergies. You’ll have to let us know if you find anything that stops this from happening! Like you said – it doesn’t seem to be related to the time of year, and we buy expensive (Dick Van Patten’s Natural Balance) food, so we hope it’s not that… maybe it’s a breed thing?
By the way, is there any other way to follow your blog other than the RSS feed? I’d love to get an email every time there’s a new post. So fun to find another Yorkie Bichon owner!!
–Jamee
Hi Jamee,
So far we haven’t discovered exactly the reason for why Jack licks his paws, or the allergy that causes it. When we switched his food to Blue Buffalo it helped some, but he’ll still have days where he’ll lick lick lick.
Regarding signing up for an email subscription to the blog, that is a good idea and I’ll look into it.
Thanks so much for reading and commenting, it makes writing a blog much more fun when others participate. I wish I could find a way for visitors to post pictures.
-Scott