Traci0612
New member
Hi, my name is Traci and we have a 4 year old English Bulldog named Tank. We've had him since he was 8 weeks old. My pic is a picture of him a month or two after we got him. He loved to ride our I-Robot around the room. The irony is now he's deathly afraid of my vacuum and runs outside whenever I turn it on or he sees me dragging it out! LOL! We love him to bits but have some issues we need advice & help with. That's how I found your website - via google - looking for answers to Tank's smell and scratch problems. From another google search we found a vet assistant who suggested a couple of things we are trying - but so far not noticing any change. Here's our 2 top issues: (1) He smells HORRIBLE -like dirty sweat socks! So bad he can stink up an entire room! (b) He constantly scratches - to the point he'll scratch till he bleeds. Over the years we have taken him to the vet only to be told he " has that Bulldog skin". Basically suck it up and deal with it was the impression I was left with. What?? Huh?? We've also owned bichons & labs and Tank currently has a pug brother and a maltese mix sister. (The pug is starting to smell like Tank. They share a crate - oh joy!) When we bought Tank from the breeder he told us to keep him on Iams. We've fed him that for the longest time to no avail. We've also tried Science Diet, Eukenuba, Beneful. Also to no avail. Nothing seems to help the smell. We have him bathed & groomed every 5-6 weeks and we have his anal glands expressed. (With the amount of poop we clean up daily I dont think he has a problem there! LOL) I clean his face every day with baby wipes. Once a week I wash his bedding on sanitary mode. He's always been prone to chronic ear infections & yeast infections. The vet says the smell is also yeast. But now his ears are fine & I keep his face folds cleaned. Still smells. He scratches CONSTANTLY!! He licks his paws a lot too. Taking him to the vet is getting costly - its a $50 office visit fee before they do anything! I've now begun giving him a daily probiotic of over 2 billion live cultures, plus I give him 1/2 cup of plain yogurt to help cut down the yeast growth. We did try a bag of grain free food for awhile. (Expensive!) That seemed to cut down the scratching a small bit. I've even gone to Walmart & bought a small spray bottle of Benedryl to spray on his neck where he scratches the most - and his belly. He loves to lay in the sun so I'm sure a touch of sunburn doesnt help. We've even sprayed him with sunblock, but I dont want to spray him with too many things since God knows what he's sensitive too. But the vet said it was ok to do . Hmmm. Still not noticing his smell going away nor the scratching. I just read on your website that bulldogs can be sensitive to chicken. And we usually buy a chicken flavored food! Yikes! The vet tells me he just has very sensitive skin and is probably allergic to many things since it doesnt seem to be seasonal. Oh - and sometimes we notice he will give off a "fishy" smell when he's excited during play. My son calls it the "***" smell. haha, cry cry.
Does anybody have any advice? Tricks of the trade?
Does anybody have any advice? Tricks of the trade?