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If Your Dog Won't Stop Scratching, It Might Not Be 'Just Allergies'
Why Topical Products Alone Can't Do All the Work.
By the team at Vital Pet Life · ~5 min read
You know the sound before you're even awake.
Jingling of the collar, thumping of a back leg, the scratching that starts up again at 2 a.m.
You know the sound before you're even awake; And if you've got one of those dogs, it isn't a one-time thing, it comes back, season after season, like clockwork.
You've done everything the vet, your friends, and the internet told you to, the oatmeal shampoo, the medicated spray, the wipes. Maybe you switched foods twice. Some of it helps for a week. Then the scratching comes right back, and you're standing in the pet-store aisle again, perplexed what you're missing.
If it keeps coming back every season, the problem probably isn't on the outside of your dog. Chances are, it isn't because you're doing anything wrong.
The skin barrier is built from the inside
A dog's skin is a barrier, holding moisture in and keeping irritants out. When that barrier is strong, seasonal irritants in the environment bothers them less. When it's compromised, pollen and dust and dryness gets through, and the scratching starts.
Sprays and shampoos work on the surface. They can soothe for a day but don't do much for the barrier since a healthy skin barrier is built from inside and depends heavily on a group of fats called omega-3s (EPA and DHA). Most dogs, on most diets, simply run short on them. That's the gap the sprays can't reach.
I tried fish oil and like a lot of people, I couldn't tell it did anything at all.
Why the fish oil you tried probably didn't help
Omega-3s are fragile. Exposed to air, light, and heat, fish oil oxidizes, it goes rancid. Much of the fish oil sold for dogs is already partly spoiled by the time it reaches the bowl. Oxidized omega-3s don't support that skin barrier the way fresh ones do; they can actually work against a healthy inflammatory response.
It's not a case of the fish oil not working, it's that the specific bottle was most likely rancid before it hit the shelf. Which raised the only question that actually matters: how would you know if a fish oil were genuinely fresh and actually absorbable?
What made the difference
I searched for a salmon oil that could prove three things instead of only making claims, and I couldn't find one until I dug a bit deeper and found Vital Pet Life Salmon Oil.