Puppy Losing Hair and Scabs On Head

I have a month and a half old German shepherd/miniature husky mix. The first picture is of her about two or three weeks ago and the second is of her today. She was always normal and healthy until about a week ago or two ago. She started losing hair on the top of her head and the skin is now pink and scabby and we don't know what's wrong. We fear it may spread or get worse. We are going to get her checked out soon but we wanted to know as soon as possible what it is that's wrong. It started out with what I thought was like a small zit on the top of her head to a few scabs to hair loss and now this. Can any one help us and let us know what's wrong??

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.


Advice From Our Veterinarian on Treating Dog Skin Diseases


Hello There,

Skin diseases can quickly go from bad to worse in puppies, so you are right to get your dog in to see your veterinarian as soon as possible. If she were my patient, I would probably want to run a few simple diagnostic tests to determine what is going on. These often include a skin scraping to rule out the presence of mites, skin cytology to diagnose yeast and/or bacterial infections, and a fungal culture to determine if ringworm might be to blame. The fungal culture takes a couple of weeks to complete, so in the meantime I will often treat for anything that I’ve found and possibly put the dog on a broad spectrum parasiticide like Revolution to kill some of the parasites that can be hard to find on diagnostic tests.

Usually, this is all that is needed to get to the bottom of a puppy’s skin problems, but in some cases testing for food and environmental allergies and even skin biopsies are required.


Best of luck,

Jennifer Coates, DVM