Allergies & Skin guides
Practical, veterinary-led guidance on Allergies & Skin, written by vets, free to read. View all guides
Calming the flare and controlling the itch: your treatment toolkit
There is no single product that fixes atopic dermatitis, and any plan built around one is already in trouble. What works is an ordered approach: get the itch down fast, then keep it down with as little medication as the...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 11 min read
Atopic dermatitis: when your pet is allergic to the world
Atopic dermatitis, often just called "allergies" in the consulting room, is one of the most common skin diseases in dogs, and it has a one-line summary worth getting straight before anything else. In plain terms it is...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
Riding out a flare: a plan that stops the itch spiralling
The skin has been settled for weeks, the itch quiet, and then one evening the scratching starts up again. A paw licked too long, a back leg working at an ear, and by morning a patch of pink skin where there was none....
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
Daily life with an atopic pet: bathing, barrier, omega-3 and lowering the load
Most atopic pets come to this point with a diagnosis, a plan, and a drug or two doing the heavy lifting. This article is about everything else: the unglamorous things you do at home between appointments. None of it...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 11 min read
Immunotherapy: the only treatment that changes the disease
Nearly every drug we give an atopic pet works the same way: it mutes the itch. Apoquel, Cytopoint, steroids, ciclosporin are all good drugs, and each one turns the signal down without laying a finger on the disease...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
Feline atopic syndrome: how allergy looks different in cats
A cat that licks itself bald, grows scabby little bumps along its back, or scratches its face and neck raw has usually earned one of two labels from someone: "it might be allergies", or "it might be stress". The first...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
Getting the diagnosis: why atopy is what is left when everything else is ruled out
Atopic dermatitis is the one allergy diagnosis that no single test can confirm. There is nothing to find on a slide or in a blood tube. Instead, a vet arrives at it by carefully subtracting everything else that itches...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
The elimination diet, done properly: the only reliable test there is
A food trial asks a lot. Weeks of policing every morsel, no treats, and a wary eye on the dog-walker. It is one of the more demanding things we ask of owners, so it helps to know why we ask. The elimination diet is not...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
Surviving the food trial: treats, family, scavenging and staying strict
The diet is chosen, the bag is in the cupboard, and now eight weeks or more of living it stretch out ahead. This is the part nobody warns you about properly. The food trial is not hard because your dog or cat has tricky...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
Food allergies in pets: what they are, and what they are not
Few topics in pet health are sold to owners as hard as food allergy. Walk down any pet-shop aisle and the bags shout "grain-free", "hypoallergenic" and "limited ingredient" at you, and the internet is full of confident...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
After the trial: the challenge, finding the trigger, and feeding for life
Eight strict weeks, no slips, and your pet is visibly more comfortable: less scratching, calmer ears, fewer flares. The hard part is behind you. What most owners do next is entirely understandable: leave well alone,...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 11 min read
Flea allergy: how one bite causes weeks of misery
The pet least likely to have visible fleas is often the flea-allergic one, which is exactly why this gets missed. "But I never see any fleas" is the usual line from owners, and it points the wrong way. The allergy...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
Mites and mange: demodex, sarcoptic scabies and the itch that is not an allergy
Two mange mites belong at the start of any allergy work-up, taken off the table before anyone spends a penny chasing an allergy. Both can imitate allergy or stack on top of it, and one of them you really cannot afford...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
Winning the flea war: treating every pet and the home, all year
Half-done flea control is the single commonest reason an itchy pet stays itchy. Owners treat, often faithfully, still see fleas and scratching, and quietly conclude the product has failed. It almost never has. The...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 12 min read
The smaller culprits: ear mites, harvest mites and walking dandruff
Ruling out fleas does not finish the parasitic part of an itch work-up. Three smaller mites get overlooked again and again because they are easy to mistake for other things: ear mites read as "just a dirty ear", harvest...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
Recurrent ear infections: why they keep coming back
There is a pattern most owners of a flare-prone pet know by heart. The ear clears on the drops. A few weeks later your pet is shaking their head again, the ear smells, and you are back at the start, opening the third or...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
Treating the infection and finding the cause: why antibiotics alone are not the answer
A course of antibiotic tablets is the classic fix for a flared, smelly, itchy patch of skin or ear, and a fortnight later the problem is gone. So when it returns, and it does return, the natural move is to ask for the...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
The smell, the goo and the scratching: skin and ear infections explained
A dog that suddenly smells different, a strong sweetish slightly rancid odour that wasn't there last week. An ear weeping brown waxy gunk, and the head-shaking that goes with it. A patch of skin the pet won't leave...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
Hot spots: the angry patch that appears overnight
A normal dog goes to bed, and by morning there's a raw, weeping, hairless patch the size of a coin, hot to the touch and clearly sore. It looks alarming, and it genuinely was not there yesterday. The single most useful...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
Why is my pet so itchy? The five things it could be
Scratching, licking, chewing, rubbing, a bald patch that has gone from thin to raw: it all comes down to one question owners want answered, which is what is causing it and how do we make it stop. The honest starting...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
The treatments compared: Apoquel, Cytopoint, steroids, ciclosporin and immunotherapy
Look up any of these itch drugs online and you'll spot a pattern fast: almost every page explaining them is published by the company that makes one of them. Apoquel's makers tell you about Apoquel, Cytopoint's about...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 11 min read
Allergy tests that work, and the ones that waste your money
When a pet is itchy, "just get an allergy test" sounds like the sensible, scientific next step. You post a kit through the letterbox, or your vet draws a little blood, and a tidy list comes back telling you exactly what...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
The itch threshold: why your pet copes with one allergy but not three
A pet who is fine all winter and falls apart in July, or whose reliable tablet suddenly does nothing, can look like a run of bad luck. It usually isn't. One idea in veterinary dermatology explains nearly all of it, and...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 13 min read
Dandruff, greasy coat and seborrhoea: when the skin barrier breaks down
White flakes scattered across the bedding, a rancid "off" smell that no amount of brushing shifts, a dull scurfy back or a greasy yellow patch under the chin: that picture is seborrhoea. The most useful thing to grasp...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 11 min read
Ringworm: the contagious one that is not a worm
Ringworm is the odd one out in this library. Almost everything else here is an allergy or a parasite. Ringworm is neither: it is a fungus, it is genuinely catching, and unlike an itchy allergy it can jump from your pet...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 11 min read
Is this a skin emergency? Swelling, hives, collapse and the hot, painful patch
Most skin trouble is miserable but safe. A pet who scratches, licks and looks moth-eaten is uncomfortable and deserves help, but is almost never in danger in the next hour. A small number of things are different: they...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
Lumps, bumps and spots: which need the vet now, and which can wait
A pea-sized lump under the skin, found by accident while you were stroking your pet, raises one question above all others: how worried should you be? Search for an answer and you will quickly meet the familiar rule,...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
Losing fur but not very itchy? When it is hormonal, not allergic
Most of this part of the site speaks to an itchy pet, because itch is what sends owners looking up skin problems in the first place. This article is for the other owner, the one whose dog or cat is going bald, or...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 12 min read
How to check your pet at home, and what to photograph
You see your pet every day. Your vet sees them for about ten minutes, on a day that may not be the day the skin looks its worst. That gap is the whole problem with skin disease, because itchy skin comes and goes, and a...
Alastair Greenway, BVM&S MRCVS · 10 min read
Find real-world care
When you're ready to take the next step in person, the PetCare Atlas lists dermatology specialists across the UK. Search by your postcode to find someone near you.
Find a vet or specialist near you