Old habits are hard to break. Bowdu still licks his feet occasionally, and I swear he’s learned to do it extra surreptitiously because he knows I don’t like it. But despite it all, his feet are looking really good now. Normal, I’d even say.
Photo taken 19 December 2010
And a front paw…
Compare this to just three months ago, when the briefest bout of licking would cause his pads to swell immediately:
Photo taken 25 September 2010. Back foot (don’t remember which one).
And just before he began his summer of imprisonment in the cone:
Photo taken 12 July 2010. After a longer bout of unapproved, furtive foot-licking.
Tonight, we are the furthest from summer that we can possibly be, and I’m actually grateful. The changing seasons have brought us reprieve, and we can finally sleep peacefully during these long, dark nights.
I hope this recovery is due to more than just changes in weather. I hope that everything we’ve done for his diet and dermal health and stabilizing his thyroid levels is contributing to a stronger overall immune system, because I’m afraid that eight months from now, this blog is going to turn once again into the chronicles of daily frustration that it was this preceding summer.
The House of Two Bows 雙寶之屋 
His paws look great! Poor puppy, that must have been so painful to deal with before. I am glad you were able to figure out a “cure”!
Holy crap! Does he have pododermatitis? Sure reminds of some of the cases I have seen in cats. Doxycycline really improved their feet and there is one who has been on it for years at this point.
His poor tootsies, glad they are looking so good now.
Beebe is a sneaky licker too. She does it at night, very quietly, or goes into another bedroom to do it since she gets scolded when I catch her doing it. The worst her feet were was a few scabby spots and missing hair, which I think was mostly from her allergies and when she had mange, so she wore a cone for a summer, but hasn’t needed it since starting all her meds.
Yup, pododermatitis was what we were told, and atopic dermatitis, which really meant little to me other than “Your shiba is allergic and reacting to SOMEthing and we don’t know what it was, but here’s a bunch of meds that might or might not work.” It was a long and frustrating summer, with lots of different drugs. We never got doxycycline though. He was treated on and off mostly with Temaril-P, before I went in in August and asked them to run a thyroid panel. And so since he was diagnosed as hypothyroid, I’m hoping that helps explain why his allergies got as bad as they did — because his entire immune system was out of wack. And so I’m hoping it doesn’t come back, at least not with such severity.