Flaky Skin/Dandruff?

I posted a few weeks back about Monty constantly chewing his feet which we saw a vet about but is still ongoing with it being a suspected allergy thing.

This week however he's got what appears to be Dandruff and he seems really itchy. If I stroke him or give him a good scratch he looks like he's in his element but then he's left with a dandruff effect in his coat.

I'm wondering if this is purely just a change in coat between seasons or whether this is linked to the feet chewing/allergy theory thing.

Any thoughts much appreciated!

What are you feeding him? As the vet suggests could well be a food intolerence, also he could be missing something vital in his diet, how old is he?

It could be food related or mites some kind of mites have this effect on the skin

I took Flynn to the vets a couple of weeks ago because he had flaky skin, a dry coat and was always scratching various parts of his body like mad, his ears included. He's been like this just about all his life.

The vet ruled out a food intolerance (simply because i've fed all kinds of kibble and he's now on raw) and put it down to a thing called atopy.

He prescribed a formulated shampoo and Viacutan and his skin and coat is much better and he's not scratching as much.

The foot chewing could maybe be related to nettle stings?

About 2 months ago we moved him from Oscar's Chicken and Herring onto James Wellbeloved Fish and Rice but this was due to a toiletting issue. So far he's been fine on the food and looking healthier than ever, shiny coat and all that just very flaky skin. He is 1 year old

The vet said mites was also possible in regards to his feet and that if we wanted we could have a scraping taken which i'm now seriously considering.

Don't think it's nettle stings as it's been going on for months and we haven't walked anywhere "nettley" for ages but interesting idea and something i hadn't thought of!

The vet has also told us about allergy testing but apparently it's expensive so i'm not really sure what to do for the best as Monty seems perfectly happy.

Have you tried maybe giving him some oil for say a week, with his food, and see if that helps?

Jess has salmon oil with her food (even though she is on raw, so it will be different from feeding kibble) and he coat has beomce much shinier and softer, so it obviously does something good

Hadn't thought about oil, might try this for a week or so and see how it goes. I'm going to give him a good bath this weekend as well.

You saying giving him a bath made me think...

How many times do you bath him and do you do it with shampoo or just water?

Not meaning to cause any sort of offence, but it will probs read that way, but do you know (sorry if you do hehe) that if you shampoo their coats, I think it is more than about twice per year, they lose the natural oils in it which helps with this sort of thing? If you bathe him regularly with shampoo, this might be part of the cause maybe.

He has a bath about once a month or when he generally smells bad! We use dog shampoo - does this cause the loss of oils as well?

No offence taken at all as i honestly didn't know that!

As far as I'm aware, ANY shampoo, be it dog or human, takes essential oils out of their coat.

Maybe try just washing him with water and giving him a good thorough brush to get out any dead hair (which I wouldn't have thought would take too long with him being a Boxer, i.e. short coat, unlike Jess lol).

I know you can get dry dog shampoo, so it might be worth giving that a try as I wouldn't have thought that would take oil out as it is dry.