WHY DOES MY DOG LICK AND SCRATCH SO MUCH?

Dear Jubilee:

My darling little love of my life dog scratches and licks his hair into knots.  He licks like a cat cleaning herself. . . . He ALSO generally vomits the moment he opens his eyes.  There really isn't much mess but the gagging is terrible.  Then, no more until the next morning.. . . Little Luke is addicted to tennis balls.  . . . Could it be the tennis ball fuzz?

Anxious in Albuequerque

Dear Anxious,

This sounds like neurotic behavior. But before I go there, have you had him checked for allergies? If it is neurotic behavior, I would seriously suggest that you do three things: one call a homeopathic vet and put this little guy on a homeopathic regimen. There are several really good homeopathic vets, and they do not need to see your dog. What they need is for you to answer a detailed list of questions about your dog. To do that, you need to keep a journal and describe everything -- good, bad, and indifferent -- that you observe about your dog. When you find a good homeopathic vet (and remember, there is a big difference between homeopathic and holistic), send him or her the message that you sent me.

The second thing that I would recommend is that you call an animal communicator. Many have successfully helped many people solve situations like this.

Finally, you have to get this picture of your dog doing this out of your mind. You have to change this to a picture of him doing what you want him to do. This is very hard, but dogs connect to us mind to mind, and when they see a picture of themselves doing something, they think they are doing what you want them to do. To help you do this, please read my article at http://www.dearjubilee.com/PictureTheBehavior.pdf ; the title is Picture the Behavior.  In addition to working on changing how you see your dog, I suggest that you get involved with your dog in some kind of training program: obedience or agility, and practice everyday. When you finish the basic course, keep going into the intermediate or novice classes. To do this, you need to find a training program that trains people for competitions even if you never plan to compete.

I started giving him boiled chicken and he likes that. 

We had a Shi'tzu that had a serious licking her toes problem. After we moved her, at age 9, to the raw diet that we feed (see http://jubileeaires.com/diet.htm ), she reduced licking considerably. She is now 17 years old. Her story is on our diet page (Chelsea's story). We started Chelsea on chicken necks, and worked her up to chicken wings. She had very few teeth, but she had no problem with the diet.   

One last thing, in May he did get all of the shots and that may enter into the question of why he scratches, and I do put Advantage on him once a month, but that does not answer the mystery of why he is sick every morning.

How old is he? Check with your vet or the homeopathic vet about stopping his shots completely. The duration of immunity studies show that most shots are good for at least seven years by challenge (exposure) and up to 15 years (maybe more) by serology (cellular stimulation in a lab). There are natural things you can do for fleas. Google the words “natural flea tick preventive.”

For support, join a list on raw feeding and on dog nutrition. I recommend two lists: for raw feeding, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rawfeeding, and for healthy feeding regardless of whether you feed raw or not, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/K9Nutrition/. Both of these lists are huge, but they good information and answer your queries, so I recommend you join both and send each of them the same query you sent me once you are a member. You will get a lot of email, but you don't have to read everything, just the messages responding to you. You can ask both of these groups all kinds of questions, and you will get good answers.

Good luck, and let us know how you and your little guy do.

 Jubilee