Losing skin off paws

[Sabreur]

I came home from three days of travel and found that my pet sitter had to take Turbo to the vet while I was gone because the skin on two of his paws blistered and came off. He has two bandaged feet, and still is limping a bit, although we did have a pretty good walk just now.

 

Does anyone else have this problem? Last summer both dogs had problems with their feet--it turned out that it was so hot that they were burning their feet on asphalt--went away when I started being really careful where I walked them.

 

One possible contributing cause: my dog sitter took them to her stable four times and went riding with them--they probably ran a whole lot on dirt/gravel roads (as opposed to the fields where I normally work with them).

 

I'm trying not to freak out, but am a little concerned--and I do want to keep it from happening again, because Turbo is really miserable when he has sore feet.

 

Cheers, MR

[Shawna]

Darcy's feet used to blister every spring and I really had to keep an eye on them when they got wet from swimming or puddling or whatever. Mom has an Aussie that blisters easily too. We've found that we can usually prevent the problem by soaking thier feet in really strong black tea (five tea bags to a pot) for a minimum of five minutes three times a week for a couple weeks before we take them any place that might be a problem. Usually once we get past the wet of spring their feet have toughened enough and we can stop.

 

This spring I wasn't quick enough starting the soaking and Darcy got a blister on both front feet. They weren't too big so I soaked them in the tea any way and it seemed to help with the healing. Maybe it was just a fluke but I'd do it again if I had to.

[sea4th]

Fortunately, I haven't ever had problems with blistered feet from hot asphalt. I did though, have a dog years ago, a Keeshond, who sat on hot asphalt and blistered his testicles. Ouch. I thought he had a social disease when I first saw it.

 

Obviously it didn't affect his locomotion, but it did affect the way he sat, for a while anyway.

 

Vicki

[sea4th]

Fortunately, I haven't ever had problems with blistered feet from hot asphalt. I did though, have a dog years ago, a Keeshond, who sat on hot asphalt and blistered his testicles. Ouch. I thought he had a social disease when I first saw it.

 

Obviously it didn't affect his locomotion, but it did affect the way he sat, for a while anyway.

 

Vicki

[2 Devils]

My bc mix has very sensitive feet (like everything else about her). We can go out and play 10 minutes of ball and frisbee and she will rub her feet raw and this is on grass

 

I just limit the amount of time she gets to play ball or frisbee (she goes full tilt).

 

During flyball we have to wrap her feet because she will run herself so raw she bleeds. We learned this the hard way and now we try and prevent it from the beginning.

 

No matter what we do, her feet rip and bleed. We have tried the pad strengthening soaks and such but nothing has helped. We just gave up and just wrap and limit things as needed. Sometimes she still does it but we can't/won't wrap her feet to just play ball/frisbee in the grass. She hates the wraps.

 

It is annoying to have dogs like this but oh well. We love her just the same