Hey guys! Wow it's been quite some time since I've been able to post on here! I hope everyone is doing well!
I have some questions about a few things we are experiencing with our rescue boy Hercules.

I saved him from a very high kill shelter over the summer, got all his vetting done and then adopted him out to a family. The family reached out a few weeks ago because he was itching at one of his paws and it had a small circle red spot. They took him to the vet and he supposedly did a skin impression/scrape. Everything looked good so they figured it was an allergic reaction so they gave him a corticosteroid shot. That helped for a few days and them he started eating at all four paws....two more corticosteroid shots later and his paws are raw, nasty and the skin is dying on them.
They gave him back to me about 5 days ago because they couldn't afford treatment and he wasn't eating or drinking... My vet diagnosed him with a severe red mange flare up, Ehrlichia Canis tick disease and a pretty bad infection.
The problem is the previous owners vet didn't see the red mange on the skin scrape (or didn't look) and now we are having a heck of a time with the mange because of all the steroid shots.
We have him on Keflex for the infection, Doxycycline for the tick disease and Ivermectin for the mange, along with benadryl to help keep the itching down. I soak his feet twice a day in epson salt and iodine...but even after all this i don't think we are making progress.
Have any of you had any experience with any of this?
His main food source has been boiled chicken since about two weeks after the new family adopted him. He got into their chicken coop and from what they said he refused to eat dog food after that. I'm just now getting him to eat boiled chicken, but that is not a good source of nutrition all by itsself. Any advice on things I can add in it? I feed my guys Taste of the Wild Pacific stream and tried to put some of the hard food in with the broth and he wouldn't touch it. He also wouldn't eat the wet food.

any help is sooooooo appreciated!!!

I would get him off the chicken asap, substitute turkey if you can find it. Has the vet done any allergy testing?

Does the vet want the paws open to air or could you get away with bandaging them? I have a really old school remedy, but you would have to bandage the feet for a couple days...

We haven't got as far as allergy testing yet. The first vet appointment was more of me convincing the vet that I will do whatever possible to save him and to let me give him a chance. They were leaning towards humanely eu because of the severity.
Our follow up is on the 23rd. We are doing another skin scrape and a blood draw to ensure his organs are functioning properly and he suggested an allergy panel to ensure he isn't allergic to the chicken.

I will try turkey!

He wants the paws to air out as much as possible but said cotton socks were fine. (I have pure white carpet in a few of my main rooms in the house and he is bleeding everywhere. The blood literally just seeps out. I keep him in a crate for the most part but when we go from the crate to outside to potty and then to the bathroom to soak it tends to be a bloody mess....literally. lol

Oh wow! Poor guy! That sounds awful! Well, here is what I would start with:

Get food grade diatomaceous earth. Use 1 tsp in his food once a day as a supplement, and then make a paste out of it by mixing it with water and rub it on his feet, bandage, and leave the bandages on for up to 48 hours (you could try one foot first to see if it helps). It's basically a plant microbe that kills pests, acts as a de-wormer and works on mange, mites, fleas, etc.

Another option to try to sooth is to use desitin (yes, the diaper rash cream) and wrap. It's an old school runners remedy that heals and soothes blisters during marathons... It's really messy though, you definitely would have to wrap the feet.

I have both at my disposal so maybe i'll do one with desitin and another with the DE and see which works best.
I'm willing to try anything. I could post pictures but they are pretty gross....and i don't remember how to get them on here! haha let me play around with that real quick to give you a better idea on what i'm dealing with.

Also, it's ridiculous that he won't eat dog food and they just went ahead and fed him boiled chicken. Wait him out. Most of them seem to love the DE added to the food. On another thread, I suggested it for tummy issues and picky eating and the OP said his dog loved it and wolfed his food down when he had been refusing it.

This is the first day i brought him home and took him to the vet


He goes to the shower first to rinse his feet off


Then to the tub to soak


and this is from after the soak yesterday

Holy cow that's horrible! I would be so pissed to get a dog back in that condition! Wow, poor guy!

For the soaks, add Domeboro solution (another runner's remedy), it's an astringent sold over the counter at most pharmacy's (walgreen's has it), it's drying and also disinfecting.

Oh trust me....when I saw him in person after the photos that were sent I was livid. I did have to call and apologize though because my vet said most of the fault lies on the vet that gave multiple corticosteroid shots to a dog that clearly had 'red' mange.
They turned the vet in but unfortunately there isn't much else that can be done. It would be nice if they offered to pay for his treatment though.

I've never heard of Domeboro, but I will look for it!

In addition to the twice daily soaks we are done a once weekly diluted bleach soak. 2 caps of bleach for every gallon of water.

Wow, that's awful. I am blown away that the vet would do that!

Wow. I have no advice, sounds like Jen gave you plenty to start. I just wanted to say this baby is lucky to have you to help him get better. I'm so angry for him that it got this bad!

So he didn't mind turkey. I'll try to keep him on that for now.
I have one paw wrapped with desitin and another with a DE paste. I took before photos and I'll check them tomorrow morning and see if we have any improvement. Thanks for the advice Jen, I am just at a loss and feel like there is more i could be doing to help him. Obviously I can't expect an overnight fix but some sort of improvement is better than nothing. His dang cone isn't long enough to keep him from getting to one of his back legs, and i feel horrible for doing this, but i had to put a leash on him to keep his head towards the front of the crate so he can't get to that paw.
I'm pretty sure he is going to hate me after all of this. The worst is giving him the ivermectin. I can only imagine how nasty it is...he FLIPS when he sees the syringe.

This is heartbreaking.

Have you read this article?

http://www.dr-dan.com/red.htm

Amy,
That was one of the first articles I read when we found out what was going on!

Is your vet doing the amitrz dip? I use an amitraz collar on Ami seasonally for tick control (tick pressure here at certain times of the year is enormous!) There are certain drugs and conditions in which it is contraindicated (MAOI's and diabetes, I think?) but is very effective.

The diatomaceous earth...I believe it works by the sharp edges of the diatomes cutting the soft bodies of insects so it may need to be dry (at least that's the instructions for gardening and slugs etc.) (I've never used it so no experience).

I wish you luck in dealing with this. That vet that gave the steroids out to be shot. Or at least sued for tx expenses. Clearly malpractise!

We are doing the ivermectin orally vs the amitraz dip. I didn't know about the dip until after we left our appointment with all the diagnosis they gave us. I am going to ask about what the difference between the two is at our next appointment though.
The reason we found out about the tick disease is because we had to do a heart worm test before he administered the ivermectin. We had a current one from August when i took him in for shots before being adopted, but i'm so glad the vet wanted to retest. otherwise we wouldn't of known until our next scheduled hw test!

Reading up on the tick disease is quite scary....i don't know where he falls on the spectrum of it to know if the medicine is even going to help him!

It looks to me like the ivermectin can be combined with amitraz dip, that ivermectin alone is for milder cases?

Doxy in humans is very effective for all tick diseases so you are probably ok on that front.

You may also want to do a search here on mange. I know there have been some other threads dedicated to it in the past that may have other helpful tips.

Also, hubby said tests for erlichiosis are funny - IGG test only says there has been an infection sometime, may be old and healed. IGM on the other hand are new antibodies and suggest current active infection. I assume your vet did the latter?

The erlichiosis diagnosis came from the 4DX Heartworm Test that was done. So i'm not exactly sure to be honest. So there is a chance this could be an old infection? The test we did over the summer didn't show anything, however it was not from the same vet so i'm not sure if they used the same heart worm test.

https://www.idexx.com/small-animal-health/products-and-services/snap-4dx-plus-test.html

That test looks like it only shows exposure at some point, further testing recommended to test for active infection.

Oh that could be good news, hopefully it's not an active infection. We have to see what brought on the red mange, he's two, so he is well beyond puppy stage so something has had to suppress his immune system to bring it on from what I have read....so this is going to be a fun journey with him.

He is up and walking around a little bit today which is huge so i'm hoping things will start getting better for his sake (and my wallets!!)

Well, I really hope something starts to kick in for him! Keep us updated! I'm glad he was a little more active!

So...DE didn't really show much of a difference, but the desitin has made the paw significantly less red and swollen...i think we may be on to something.
I had a heck of a time getting him to take all his pills today so we ended up only giving him one of the two benadryl pills and its amazing how alert he is right now. He even stood up when I walked by his crate. Usually i have to get in his crate and get him to stand up to get him out. I don't know if that is due to him missing a pill or if it is just progress in general, but i'll take it! His next round of pills is at 4 so i'm hoping he stays this alert afterwards! I'll post some pictures of the difference between his paws this evening Thank you for all of the help!!

That's awesome! I'm so happy it could help, even a little! Plus, his feet will smell baby fresh.