Although Licorice’s skin and hair regrowth have been phenomenally better than before, the stress of being a submissive dog at the shelter, I think, was interferring a bit with the daily treatment and causing patches of hair to start falling out again. Before her flight out, Care For Dogs took Licorice to the vet in order to check her kidney and liver values (since ivermectin- the common treatment for mange- can damage those two organs when given long term) and found that her kidney values were high. Since I knew she would have additional stresses due to the flight, I decided to stop the treatment until we’d arrived in California. I’d purchased some topical creams, too, that were purported to help kill the mange on her skin and decided to use only those for two weeks and see what the results would be. Well my poor darling started losing a LOT more hair almost immediately and so I took her to the vet in the states to see what their recommendation would be. They did a skin scrape to examine her cells under the microscope and detected both demodex mange as well as bacteria (probably due to the open sores she had from scratching herself).

The vet recommended to put her back on ivermectin by mouth as well as add malaseb shampoo. The shampoo helps, he explained, by killing the bacteria on the skin thereby  allowing the hair follicle to regrow once the ivermectin kicks in. The vet added that I should shampoo her every three days and leave it on for 10 minutes before rinsing… so she’s taking showers with me! lol  She doesn’t mind it until she thinks of licking herself while we’re waiting and starts foaming at the mouth…. arggghhhh! lol

As we speak, Licorice is rolling around on my bed trying to get me to come and play with her. I had to bathe her in my shower this evening and she decided to dry herself out by streaming across my bed covers! She’s really too cute. Oh, wait, gotta go- she just picked up a pen of mine and has started chewing it on the bed! Bad girl, baaaad girl!