Itching in Dogs: Finding the Cause Instead of Guessing

In brief

There are five things you should know about itching. First: itching is a symptom, not a diagnosis—and the causes differ so fundamentally that guessing gets expensive. Second: parasites are among the first things to be ruled out—even if you have never seen a single flea. Third, and this is the most important point for your wallet: hair and saliva allergy tests do not work. In one study, the results such a test produced for samples from an allergic dog, a healthy dog and fake fur differed no more than would be expected by chance. Fourth: for food intolerance there is exactly one reliable route—a strict elimination diet followed by a food challenge. Fifth: atopic dermatitis cannot be cured, but it can be controlled well—and the guideline relies on several building blocks at once, not on a miracle cure.

Few problems cost owners as much money and patience as a dog that scratches constantly. This article sorts out the causes, explains which tests are useful and which are not, and shows the route that actually leads to an answer.

Note: This article is general information and does not replace a veterinary examination. Persistent itching should be investigated—not least because it can hide diseases that have nothing to do with allergy.

👉 Prevention and health at a glance: Dog Health Basics

1. How much scratching is normal?

Every dog scratches. The line between normal and abnormal is blurry, and that is exactly why it is often noticed late.

It becomes a concern when scratching interrupts activities—the dog stops in the middle of eating, playing or sleeping to work on itself. Other signs: licking the paws until the fur turns rust-brown, nibbling at the flanks or the base of the tail, head shaking, rubbing the face on furniture, bald or thickened patches, scaly or reddened skin, and a changed smell.

Two things are regularly overlooked. Itching does not only show up as scratching—licking and nibbling count just as much, they just look more harmless. And itching disrupts sleep. A dog that is restless at night, gets up often and works on its skin can be chronically sleep-deprived. That may help explain why itchy dogs often become more irritable and less responsive at the same time.

👉 Why constant strain leaves its mark: chronic stress in dogs, neurobiology and cortisol

1.1 Making itching measurable

Before anything is investigated, there is one step worth taking that costs nothing and pays off throughout the whole process: a number instead of an impression.

Dermatology uses a scale from zero to ten for this. Zero means: scratches no more than any other dog. Ten means: scratches, licks and nibbles almost nonstop, even at night, and can hardly be interrupted. Everything else lies in between—what matters is not the exact definition of each level, but that you apply it the same way over months.

Write it down daily, in one sentence: date, score, notable body areas, food, anything unusual. Two minutes in the evening.

The benefit only shows later, but then it is clear. Itching fluctuates considerably from day to day, and improvement comes gradually. If all you have is an impression, you judge by the last bad day—and you stop a diet or a treatment that was actually working. A weekly average shows a trend that stays invisible in everyday life.

And for the vet clinic it is the difference between “I think it’s a bit better” and “the weekly average has dropped from 7 to 4.” Only the second statement can be used to steer treatment.

A practical tip: whenever possible, have the same person do the scoring. Different members of a household judge with different strictness, and that difference is often larger than the change you are trying to measure.

2. The three main groups

Almost everything that itches falls into one of three groups—and the order in which you work through them is not arbitrary.

Parasites: fleas, mites (mange, Demodex, harvest mites), lice. They come first because they are common, treatable and cheap to rule out.

Food-related intolerance: less common than generally assumed, but real. Typical is year-round itching, often with gastrointestinal involvement.

Environmental allergy (atopic dermatitis): the most common form of allergy. A reaction to house dust mites, pollen, mold spores. It usually starts between the first and third year of life, is often seasonal at first and becomes year-round over the years.

On top of that there are causes outside these groups: yeast and bacterial overgrowth, hormonal disorders such as hypothyroidism, and, less often, autoimmune diseases. That is another reason why “it’s probably an allergy” is a poor starting point.

2.1 Where it itches says something about the group

Before any test is done, the distribution on the body provides a clue that costs nothing. It is not proof, but it shifts the probabilities—and it is the information that is often missing in the exam room, because nobody looked specifically.

Lower back, base of the tail, hind legs. The typical pattern of flea allergy dermatitis.

Paws, armpits, groin, face, ears, belly. The classic distribution pattern of atopic dermatitis—that is, where the skin is thin and in contact with the environment.

Ear margins, elbows, hocks. Classic for sarcoptic mange, often with very intense itching that can hardly be interrupted.

Between the toes, on the pads. Harvest mites in season, visible as tiny orange dots.

Year-round, shifting distribution, often with soft stool or frequent bowel movements. This points more toward a food-related intolerance.

It is important to record this pattern before the first treatment—ideally with photos. Once the dog has scratched and licked and been treated, everything overlaps and the original distribution can no longer be reconstructed.

3. Fleas first—even if you don’t see any

This is the step that gets skipped most often, and always with the same sentence: “He doesn’t have fleas, I checked.”

The problem is flea allergy dermatitis. In a dog that reacts to flea saliva, a few bites can be enough to trigger weeks of itching. And a dog that licks and nibbles intensely can remove the fleas itself in the process—so you often simply don’t find them anymore. Itching on the lower back, at the base of the tail and on the hind legs is typical.

That is why every workup starts with a consistent treatment trial against external parasites, over several weeks and for all animals in the household.

A biological point is decisive here, and it is where most attempts fail: a large part of the flea population is not on the dog but in the environment. Eggs, larvae and pupae sit in carpets, cracks, dog beds, blankets and the car. If you only treat the animal, new fleas arrive from the surroundings within a few days—and you wrongly consider fleas ruled out. The trial therefore must include thorough vacuuming, hot washing of all textiles the dog lies on and, depending on the situation, treatment of the environment. Pupae are particularly resistant and can survive for weeks—which is why a one-off effort is not enough. This is not a delaying tactic but the cheapest and fastest way to rule out an entire group of causes. If you skip this step, you end up testing for allergies later while the actual trigger keeps going.

👉 What other parasites are involved: deworming or fecal testing?

4. What hair and saliva tests really measure

This is the most expensive misconception in the whole field—and the data on it are unusually clear.

Numerous companies sell tests directly to owners, for which a hair sample or a saliva swab is mailed in. What comes back is a list of dozens to over a hundred substances, divided into tolerated and not tolerated. It looks thorough and is affordable.

Two research groups have checked such tests. In one study, fur and saliva samples from a dog with confirmed allergy and from a healthy dog were submitted—plus five samples made of fake fur and swabs soaked in tap water. Testing covered 128 substances.

The result: the distribution of findings for the allergic dog, the healthy dog and the fake fur differed no more than would be expected by chance. Repeatability was poor to slight at best—the same sample, resubmitted a few weeks later, produced different results. The authors note that the similarity between real and fake samples raises the suspicion that no analysis is taking place at all (Coyner & Schick 2019). A second, independent research group reached the same conclusion in the same year (Bernstein et al. 2019).

So the test could not even tell whether a dog was involved at all.

The damage goes beyond the purchase price. Based on such lists, owners cut a dozen foods, complicate feeding for months—and the actual cause continues untreated while the dog keeps itching.

If you have already done such a test: the result cannot be used, but no harm has been done as long as you have not acted on the list. Bring it up openly with your vet—what matters most is which foods you have already cut based on the result. Because that is exactly what determines which protein source can still count as new to your dog for a later elimination diet.

5. What blood tests can—and cannot—do

Blood tests for allergen-specific antibodies are also frequently misunderstood, and the distinction matters.

On their own, they are not suitable for diagnosing atopic dermatitis. A dog can have antibodies against house dust mites in its blood without being allergic—and vice versa. Atopic dermatitis is therefore diagnosed clinically: through the history, age at onset, distribution pattern of the affected body areas, seasonality and the exclusion of other causes.

For food allergies they are unsuitable, and so are intradermal tests. There is no valid laboratory test here.

What they are meant for: selecting the allergens for allergen immunotherapy (hyposensitization)—that is, only once the diagnosis has been made and the question is what to treat with. A blood test at the start answers the wrong question.

6. The elimination diet: the only reliable route

When a food intolerance is suspected, exactly one route leads to an answer, and it is inconvenient.

Over a sufficiently long period—usually about eight weeks—the dog is fed exclusively one of two types of food, and the two work in different ways.

With a single-protein diet based on a novel protein source, the principle is this: an allergic reaction requires the immune system to already know the substance. If the dog has never eaten insect, horse or rabbit, it is as a rule not sensitized to them—and therefore normally does not react to them.

With a hydrolyzed diet, the proteins are broken down enzymatically to such an extent that the fragments are, as a rule, too small to still be recognized by the immune system as an allergen. Incidentally, this explains something that puzzles many owners: the bag of a diet for allergic dogs may well say “poultry”—what matters is not the source but the size of the fragments. If the itching improves, the decisive second step follows: the food challenge. The old food is reintroduced. If the itching returns, the case is proven. If it does not, the food was not the cause—and the diet has still served its purpose.

This second step is often left out. Without it, nobody knows whether the improvement was due to the diet or to the fact that there was no pollen in the air at the time.

The most common reason for an unusable result is a different one, though: something else was given on the side. A treat during training, a chew, the pill hidden in a piece of sausage, leftovers from a plate, flavored toothpaste, a sip from the other dog’s bowl. An elimination diet is only an elimination diet if it is followed without compromise.

For training class and everyday life, that means in practical terms: during the diet phase, rewards come exclusively from the diet food. It can be done—you just have to know it in advance and plan for it.

One misunderstanding needs to be cleared up at this point, because it makes dogs suffer unnecessarily: an ongoing workup does not mean the itching has to go untreated. Dampening it in parallel is explicitly intended, so that the dog gets through the weeks in reasonable comfort—the guideline calls for treatment made up of several building blocks, and itch control is one of them.

What needs to be agreed with your vet is the type of treatment. Some drugs suppress itching so completely that the success of a diet can no longer be judged, and corticosteroids can also distort the skin examination. So the question is not whether, but with what—and that is not something to decide from your medicine cabinet.

7. Where the elimination diet fails in practice

The principle is simple; carrying it out is not. Most diets do not fail because of the food, but because of everything else that ends up in the dog—almost always unintentionally. So here is the list that should hang on the fridge.

7.1 What counts even though it isn’t food

Treats and training food. The single most common mistake. For the duration of the diet, rewards come exclusively from the diet food—baked dry, broken into pieces, or if necessary moistened and shaped.

Chews. Bully sticks, cow ears, chew bones, buffalo hide strips—all protein. Chew roots and antlers are not automatically safe either, because they are often flavored.

Dental care products. Toothpaste, dental sticks and chew strips as a rule contain flavorings of animal origin.

Medications and supplements. Dewormers, tick tablets, joint supplements and pain medication often come as meat-flavored chewable tablets. This is the mistake almost nobody thinks of—ask your vet about it; there is usually an alternative for the diet period.

Table scraps and pity bites. A piece of cheese from a visitor, the bread crust from breakfast, the leftovers from the child’s bowl.

Care by others. Neighbors, dog walkers, training class, grandparents. Everyone needs to know, and with the reason why—otherwise it gets dismissed as fussiness.

What the dog finds outdoors. Other animals’ feces, fallen fruit, food scraps along the path. In a dog that eats things on walks, the diet is hardly feasible without a muzzle or very close supervision.

7.2 Why slip-ups undermine the whole diet

This is the point that justifies the strictness in the first place. A single slip-up can trigger a reaction that lasts several days—and afterward it is no longer possible to tell whether the itching comes from the slip-up or whether the diet food is not working.

You then end up, after eight weeks, without a result, having invested time, money and patience. Hence the rule in section 15: do it consistently or not at all.

7.3 What helps it succeed

Choose the start date deliberately, not on a whim—not in the week of a children’s birthday party, a move or a vacation. Write to everyone involved instead of mentioning it in passing. Clear away the old treats instead of leaving them out. And write down every slip-up instead of keeping quiet about it: it does not make the diet worthless, as long as your vet knows about it and extends the period accordingly.

And plan the second step from the very beginning. A diet without a subsequent food challenge does not deliver a result, only a guess—and this is exactly where many people drop out, because the dog is doing well right now.

8. Atopic dermatitis: the most common form of allergy

Atopic dermatitis is an excessive reaction to environmental substances, combined with an impaired skin barrier. The two belong together: the skin seals less tightly, allergens penetrate more easily, and the inflammation damages the barrier further.

Typical features are onset between the first and third year of life, often seasonal at first, and a characteristic distribution pattern: paws, armpits, groin, belly, face and ears. The back is rather atypical—there, fleas are the first thing to consider.

What is important to understand: it cannot be cured. The goal is control, not elimination. Accepting this early saves you the round of miracle cures and lets you work instead on a plan that functions.

Breeds with an increased risk include the French Bulldog, West Highland White Terrier, Labrador and Golden Retriever, Boxer and Shar Pei—the predisposition is clearly heritable.

9. Why the ears are part of it

Recurring ear infections are the rule rather than the exception in allergic dogs—and often the first sign, long before anyone thinks of the skin.

The connection is simple: the ear canal is lined with skin. What itches on the belly becomes inflamed there too—with the difference that it is moist and warm, and bacteria and yeasts thrive.

This leads to the most important practical rule: a recurring ear infection is a sign of allergy until proven otherwise. If you only give ear drops, you treat the result every time and never the cause—which is why it comes back as soon as the drops run out.

In practice, this means: a dog with recurring ear infections needs not just another round of ear treatment, but above all a workup of what lies underneath. In these cases the ear infection is the tip and not the problem—and every round of ear drops that overlooks this postpones the actual diagnosis by weeks.

10. Secondary infections: the last straw

On inflamed, scratched skin, bacteria and yeasts that live there anyway multiply. These secondary infections are not a side issue—they can account for a considerable part of the itching.

They can be recognized by greasy, sticky fur, darkened and thickened skin, pustules, crusts and a distinct, musty odor. Preferred sites are the spaces between the toes, skin folds, armpits and ears.

Recognizing them does not require an expensive lab, but the cheapest tool in dermatology: skin cytology. Material is taken from the skin with a piece of adhesive tape or an impression smear, stained and looked at under the microscope. Only there does it become clear whether yeasts or bacteria have the upper hand—and treatment is chosen accordingly. A purely visual diagnosis of “that looks like yeast” can be misleading. Feel free to ask whether cytology was done; it takes minutes and often changes the treatment.

Important for the order: these infections are treated first. Only then can you judge how much itching the underlying disease causes at all. If you skip this, you are evaluating a distorted picture—and may conclude that an effective medication is ineffective.

11. When it isn’t an allergy after all

Some itchy dogs have no allergy at all—and this group gets lost when allergy is settled on too early.

Sarcoptic mange mites cause extremely intense itching, often on the ear margins, elbows and hocks. They cannot always be detected in a skin scraping, which is why here, too, the approach when in doubt is to treat rather than test. They can be transmitted to humans.

Demodex mites are part of the normal skin fauna and only become a problem when the body’s defenses are impaired—typically in young dogs or in dogs with an underlying disease.

Hypothyroidism and other hormonal disorders change the skin and coat, make them prone to infection and can lead to itching by that indirect route. Additional typical signs are weight gain, lethargy and a dull coat.

Pain can show up as licking. A dog that persistently works on a single spot—often over a joint—may not have a skin problem at all, but an orthopedic one.

Behavior: in individual dogs, licking that originally had a medical cause turns into a self-sustaining pattern. However, this is a diagnosis of exclusion and not the first suspicion—“he does it out of boredom” is the explanation that most often comes too early and costs the most time.

11.1 Why the process takes so long

If you have made it to this point in the article, you can already guess: working up itching takes months, not weeks. That is not inefficiency; it lies in the nature of the problem—and knowing it in advance prevents the most common reason for giving up.

The math typically looks like this: several weeks for consistently ruling out parasites, in parallel or afterward treatment of any secondary infections, then about eight weeks of elimination diet, then the food challenge. If you do everything in order, you are at four to six months—and at that point you only have the diagnosis, not yet a treatment that is fine-tuned.

The reason for the order is that the steps mask one another. A dog with a yeast infection keeps itching even if the diet food is right. A dog with flea allergy dermatitis keeps itching even if there is no environmental allergy. If you try several things in parallel, in the end you cannot say what worked.

This leads to a realistic expectation: during these months the goal is not for the dog to become symptom-free, but to narrow down the cause—while keeping the itching bearable. That is why symptomatic treatment often runs alongside during this time, and this does not contradict the workup; it is part of the plan.

The only thing that shortens this time is consistency. Every trial that is abandoned and restarted resets the clock—that is a major reason why some dogs itch for years.

12. What the guideline recommends for treatment

The international expert body ICADA has published guidelines on this, and their core message is: several building blocks at once, not a single therapy.

For acute flares, the guideline puts finding and eliminating the trigger first, together with bathing with mild shampoos and medications against itching and skin lesions—topical or as tablets.

For chronic cases, the unspectacular measures come first: identifying and avoiding triggers, ensuring skin and coat care, bathing more often and, where appropriate, increasing the intake of essential fatty acids. Only then come the drugs that dampen itching most effectively—the guideline lists topical and oral glucocorticoids as well as ciclosporin and oclacitinib.

Since this version was published, an option has been added that has changed a lot in practice: a monoclonal antibody (lokivetmab), given as an injection at intervals of several weeks. It acts very selectively by neutralizing a single messenger molecule that plays a major role in itching in dogs—interleukin-31. Because it does not broadly suppress the immune system but only blocks this one signal, part of the organ-related burden that requires monitoring with classic immunosuppressants does not apply. That makes it particularly interesting for older dogs and dogs with preexisting conditions.

Many people are surprised that bathing and fatty acids come before the drugs. This is not a concession to gentleness; it follows from the fact that the skin barrier is part of the disease.

We deliberately do not give doses here—the choice depends on age, preexisting conditions, other medications and the course of the disease, and belongs in your veterinarian’s hands.

13. Allergen immunotherapy: the only option that targets the cause

In allergen-specific immunotherapy (hyposensitization), the dog is exposed over months to years to increasing amounts of the allergens it reacts to—as injections or as drops under the tongue.

It is the only treatment that targets the mechanism instead of the symptom. Realistic expectations are part of it: it does not work in every dog, it takes several months before it can be evaluated, and in the early phase it does not replace any other treatment. In return, it can substantially reduce the long-term need for medication—which carries particular weight in young dogs with many years ahead of them.

13.1 When a referral makes sense

The vast majority of cases can be worked up and managed by your regular veterinarian. But there are situations in which a clinic specializing in dermatology can help faster—and owners often hesitate too long because it feels like a vote of no confidence.

When the order has been worked through properly and the dog is still itching. Parasites ruled out, secondary infections treated, diet followed strictly—and the picture remains unclear.

When secondary infections keep coming back. This suggests that the underlying cause has not been identified, and repeated courses of antibiotics are a problem in their own right.

When allergen immunotherapy is being considered. Selecting and combining the allergens is a matter of experience.

When the picture doesn’t fit. Unusual distribution, involvement of the nose, pads or mucous membranes, general signs of illness, crusts or blisters—these can point to autoimmune diseases that require other tests.

A referral is not a criticism of your current vet. Dermatology is a specialty of its own with its own diagnostic options, and good general practitioners refer on their own when that point is reached. If you ask about it yourself, you will usually get a factual answer.

14. What you are better off not doing

Few topics attract so much advice, and some of it measurably prolongs the problem.

Switching food every two weeks. The most common way to sabotage your own workup. If you try a new food every two weeks, after six months you have used up a dozen protein sources—and for a later elimination diet there is hardly anything left that the dog has never eaten.

Corticosteroids from your own medicine cabinet. They work, and that is exactly the problem: they suppress itching so strongly that the search for the cause becomes considerably harder. On top of that, prior treatment with corticosteroids can distort the assessment of the skin—skin scrapings and impression smears can then look normal even though something is there. If you have treated before an appointment, you absolutely have to say so.

Oil baths, home remedies and coat treatments for everything. Cooking oil in the food, apple cider vinegar on the skin, coconut oil against parasites, tea tree oil in any form—the latter is decidedly problematic for dogs. The real damage lies elsewhere, though: as long as something seems to help, nobody investigates.

Starting a diet without consulting your vet. Many do-it-yourself attempts use protein sources the dog has long known, or a “hypoallergenic” commercial food that is not hydrolyzed. The result is then unusable.

Stopping everything as soon as things improve. Atopic dermatitis cannot be cured, only controlled. A dog that is doing well under treatment is a treatment success—not a cured dog.

What all these points have in common: they feel like taking action. With itching, though, the more effective action is almost always to stick to an order instead of trying several things in parallel.

15. What you can do at home

Keep an itch diary. A simple scale from zero to ten, noted daily, plus location, season and food. It sounds petty and is the most valuable tool of all—because improvement comes gradually and impressions are deceptive.

Photograph affected areas at the same distance and in the same light.

Keep parasite protection seamless, in winter too and for purely urban dogs too.

Do the elimination diet consistently or not at all. A half-hearted diet costs eight weeks and delivers nothing.

Bathe your dog if it was recommended—even if it is a hassle. It is an effective building block, not a spa program.

Expect control, not a cure, and measure success by good weeks, not individual days.

👉 Why external parasites belong in the picture too: tick prevention for dogs

16. Limits of the evidence

The studies on hair and saliva tests concerned individual commercial providers. Strictly speaking, this does not refute every test on the market—but it does show that such methods are sold without validation and that two independent groups found no diagnostic value whatsoever in the products tested. As long as a provider presents no solid validation, skepticism is the right starting point.

The ICADA treatment guideline, in the version cited, dates from 2015. Since then, drugs have been added that do not appear in it at all or only marginally—the basic structure of several building blocks still applies, but the choice of medications has broadened.

And the eight-week duration of an elimination diet is an experience-based figure with a range: some dogs respond earlier, a few need longer. The decisive factor is not the exact number of weeks but consistency.

A note on the structure of the evidence: the two studies on hair and saliva tests are experimental checks using planted control samples—a type of study that is rare and particularly informative here, because it answers the question directly. The treatment recommendations, by contrast, come from a guideline paper, that is, consensus expert opinion based on the literature. Both are solid, but in different ways: one refutes something, the other puts things into context.

17. Conclusion

Itching is a symptom with very different causes, and the route to an answer runs through an order, not a shortcut: first rule out parasites, then treat secondary infections, then narrow it down to food or environment. The most tempting shortcut is also the most useless—in controlled checks, hair and saliva tests could not even distinguish between an allergic dog, a healthy dog and fake fur. What works is less convenient: a strictly followed elimination diet with a food challenge, or a clinical diagnosis of atopic dermatitis with a treatment plan made up of several building blocks. In return, this route leads to an answer—the other one only to a list.

👉 What matters when choosing: how to find a good veterinarian

If you take away only one thing: start by ruling out parasites and with a number in your diary—not with a test and not with a change of food. The two cheapest steps are also the ones that make everything else interpretable in the first place.

Key takeaways on itching in dogs

Itching is a symptom, not a diagnosis. The causes differ so fundamentally that the order of the workup matters more than any single measure.

Parasites are among the first things to be ruled out—even without a visible flea. With flea allergy dermatitis, a few bites can be enough for weeks of itching, and a dog that licks intensely can remove the fleas itself. Ruling them out is cheap and fast, and yet it is the step most often skipped.

A large part of the flea population is not on the dog. Eggs, larvae and pupae live in carpets, cracks and textiles. If you only treat the animal, you wrongly consider fleas ruled out.

Hair and saliva allergy tests do not work. The findings for an allergic dog, a healthy dog and fake fur differed no more than would be expected by chance; the same sample produced different results when repeated (Coyner & Schick, 2019; Bernstein et al., 2019).

At the start, blood tests answer the wrong question. They serve to select allergens for immunotherapy, not to make the diagnosis—and for food allergies there is no valid laboratory test at all.

The elimination diet absolutely needs the second step. Without a food challenge it delivers a guess, not a result. And it rarely fails because of the food, but because of treats, chews, flavored medications and care by others.

Atopic dermatitis is diagnosed clinically—through the history, age at onset, distribution pattern, seasonality and the exclusion of other causes.

The guideline relies on several building blocks at once. That bathing and skin care come before the drugs is not a concession to gentleness; it follows from the fact that the skin barrier is part of the disease.

The goal is control, not a cure—and success is measured by good weeks, not individual days.

References

• Coyner, K. & Schick, A. (2019): Hair and saliva test fails to identify allergies in dogs. Journal of Small Animal Practice 60(2): 121–125. https://doi.org/10.1111/jsap.12952 (samples from an allergic dog, a healthy dog, plus fake fur and tap water; tested for 128 allergens; distribution of results not distinguishable from chance, repeatability poor to slight; the authors voice the suspicion that no actual analysis takes place)
• Bernstein, J. A. et al. (2019): Hair and saliva analysis fails to accurately identify atopic dogs or differentiate real and fake samples. Veterinary Dermatology. https://doi.org/10.1111/vde.12716 (independent study with the same result)
• Olivry, T., DeBoer, D. J., Favrot, C., Jackson, H. A., Mueller, R. S., Nuttall, T. & Prélaud, P. (2015): Treatment of canine atopic dermatitis: 2015 updated guidelines from the International Committee on Allergic Diseases of Animals (ICADA). BMC Veterinary Research 11: 210. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12917-015-0514-6 (acute flare: find and eliminate the trigger, bathing with mild shampoos, glucocorticoids or oclacitinib; chronic course: first trigger avoidance, skin and coat care, essential fatty acids, then medication)
• Hensel, P., Santoro, D., Favrot, C. et al. (2015): Canine atopic dermatitis: detailed guidelines for diagnosis and allergen identification. BMC Veterinary Research 11: 196. (atopic dermatitis as a clinical diagnosis; allergy tests serve to select allergens for immunotherapy, not to make the diagnosis)
• O'Neill, D. G., Church, D. B., McGreevy, P. D., Thomson, P. C. & Brodbelt, D. C. (2014): Prevalence of Disorders Recorded in Dogs Attending Primary-Care Veterinary Practices in England. PLOS ONE. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0090501 (ear infection, at 10.2%, the most frequently recorded diagnosis)

Frequently asked questions about itching in dogs

What vets get asked most often