What does alopecia look like in dogs? Here’s What to Expect

Clubs Offering:

Shedding happens. It’s a fact. You can always count on locks losing their grip when spring or early autumn rolls around and dogs shed their seasonal coats. Environmental factors like temperature, nutrition, and stress can also affect canine coat loss.

But while some loose hair occurs routinely during a dog’s hair growth cycles, thinning hair with mild to severe scratching and bald patches—also known as alopecia—is not. If you’re concerned your dog’s shedding is a bit excessive or abnormal, you may want to look into if they have this condition.

Alopecia, otherwise known as abnormal hair loss or baldness, is the inability to regrow hair regularly or when hair falls out partially or entirely over the dog’s body. It occurs when the body attacks its own hair follicles, resulting in hair falling out. There’s typically a pattern to the baldness and it will either spread out or appear symmetrical. Alopecia also affects both people and dogs.

Some alopecia flareups are temporary and improve with treatment, while others are permanent. Although bald patches on the skin aren’t pretty to look at, alopecia isn’t life-threatening, and dogs can live everyday life with or without all of their hair. However, you will want to do something to make sure the itching isn’t uncomfortable for your pet.

In addition to thin areas of the coat and excessive licking, scratching, and shedding, other signs of alopecia include:

hair loss along the dog’s side and thighs

darkened skin or change in skin color

dry, crusty skin

red, inflamed skin that may appear thickened or bleeding

dandruff or flaky skin

red spots on the skin with or without hives or pustules (pimples).

When a dog scratches constantly without stopping, it causes stress and anxiety in the dog and the owner. To make matters worse, tearing at the skin to try to ease the discomfort can trauma and create wounds on your dog’s skin. To provide some relief and/or alleviate the condition, you’ll need to determine the underlying cause.

There are many reasons why a dog develops this irritating skin condition, including heredity or hormonal issues. Most are treatable or manageable. Usually, these cause the dog’s coat to thin out but don’t produce excessive itching and scratching.

A dog can acquire alopecia from a parasitic infestation of fleas, lice, mosquitoes, or mange mites such as Demodex or Sarcoptes. Spider bites or insect stings can wreak havoc on the skin, too. Plus, an inadequate diet, food allergies, or an outdoor, dirty, hot, or moist environment responsible for a fungal or bacterial infection will cause ringworm or skin allergies. You will notice that a dog will lick and scratch incessantly to relieve the irritation.

Endocrine diseases such as hypothyroidism (low thyroid hormone), Cushing’s disease (high cortisol), or reactions to rabies and corticosteroid injections can also cause alopecia. Additionally, an established yeast infection on the skin weakens the immune system and causes digestive issues, inflammation, and itching. The resulting scratching leads to hair loss.

Reactions from rabies vaccines and steroid injections, cancer, chemical exposure, burns, and normal aging can produce alopecia. While there are multiple reasons why a dog may get alopecia, you can work with your veterinarian to determine the specific cause.

Some dogs may experience seasonal flank alopecia. This non-inflammatory type of hair loss—either partial or total—usually begins in early adulthood and shows up during the cold winter months on both sides of the abdomen in front of the rear legs

Blame the shorter days and lack of sunlight for irritating the dog’s flanks. Occasionally, though, the hair loss appears on the sides of the chest, base of the tail, nose, and ears.

This type of alopecia can last six months, beginning in late fall and lasting until early spring when the hair starts to grow back.

In some cases, hair loss can signal a severe underlying condition. A trip to the veterinarian’s office will help pinpoint the problem. The vet can perform a physical examination and examine a dog’s hair follicles for signs of damage. You may also need to do blood tests or biopsies can confirm or eliminate medical causes.

Diagnostic laboratory tests with smears and a skin culture can reveal any bacterial, fungal, or yeast infections, whereas a skin scraping can rule out parasites.

Some types of alopecia are preventable, while others are not. If genetics or an auto-immune disorder is the reason for the hair loss, there’s no way to prevent it.

Ridding a dog of parasites is easier, as many preventive medicines are available. You should also reevaluate your dog’s current diet and switch to a well-balanced one or eliminating common food allergens will improve hair loss caused by an inadequate diet.

There is also a wide range of prescription medications available to treat alopecia from reoccurring. These include antibiotics, antihistamines, antifungals, and steroids. Your veterinarian will determine the best treatment for your pet.

What Is Alopecia?

Alopecia is the medical term for hair loss or baldness. There are many different types of alopecia that affect dogs. With most types of alopecia, the dogs fur loss is temporary and hair growth resumes once the root cause is treated. However, inherited forms of alopecia are sometimes permanent or recurring conditions.

Depending on the cause of the alopecia, the dog might lose most of the fur on its body, but more often, alopecia leads to partial hair loss in the form of localized bald spots, symmetrical hair loss on one or both sides of the body, or fur that looks thin and moth-eaten.

Alopecia can affect any part of your dogs body, but most often appears on the ears, the top of the head, the belly, or the flanks.

Causes of Alopecia

Alopecia can occur for a number of reasons, but causes are typically lumped into two categories: congenital or acquired. Congenital alopecia means the dog is born with hair follicles that do not develop normally, usually due to genetics. Symptoms of these types of alopecia can appear when the dog is still a puppy or later in young adulthood.

Acquired alopecia means the dog was born with a normal coat and normal hair follicles, but now has areas of baldness or hair loss due to damage to the hair follicles, issues with the hair shaft itself, or a slowdown in the normal hair-growth cycle.

Many causes of alopecia have specific names, while others are simply symptoms of another illness or condition. Some named types of alopecia include:

Alopecia Areata: Focal areas of hair loss are classic with this type of alopecia. This is a rare auto-immune disease that typically doesnt have any inflammation. It is usually seen on the head and neck.

Follicular Dysplasia: This type of alopecia affects specific breeds and causes a thin coat that is often described as being moth-eaten in appearance. Color dilution alopecia and follicular lipidosis are specific forms of follicular dysplasia and are due to a genetic cause.

Post-Injection Alopecia: After some types of injections, especially the rabies vaccine or shots of steroids, some dogs develop alopecia at the injection site. Post-injection alopecia is due to the inflammation these injections can cause in the skin.

Post-Clipping Alopecia: Sometimes when a dogs fur is shaved, the fur does not grow back normally in the clipped area. The cause of this type of alopecia is unknown.

Pattern Baldness: This hair loss has an unknown cause, but is likely hereditary. It leads to progressive hair loss, mostly over the dogs neck, thighs, and belly. It also often causes darkening of the skin in the affected areas.

Traction Alopecia: When a dogs hair is styled too tightly with barrettes, rubber bands, or other fashion accessories, the hair follicles can become damaged enough to drop their hairs.

Pinnal Alopecia: Isolated to the ear flaps, pinnal alopecia is a congenital form of alopecia that causes hair loss on the ears.

Alopecia can also occur due to parasites such as mites or fleas, environmental or food allergies, bacterial or fungal infections, hormonal issues such as low thyroid hormone (hypothyroidism) or high cortisol (Cushings disease), some tumors, topical medications, and even seasonal fluctuations.

Certain breeds of dogs are predisposed to developing various types of congenital alopecia. Breeds that are commonly affected by different types of alopecia include:

5 Common Dog Skin Problems: Hair Loss, Hot Spots and Dandruff, Allergic Dermatitis, Itching

Alopecia, also known as hair loss, is a very common condition in dogs. Alopecia is different from shedding, which is a normal part of your dog’s hair growth cycle and depends on the dog’s breed. Alopecia refers to either thinning hair or spots of hair loss (bald spots). Where the hair loss occurs can depend on the underlying cause.

If the alopecia is caused by parasites, they may or may not be visible. Fleas, ticks, and lice can be seen with the naked eye; mites and fungal elements such as ringworm cannot be seen. Often the dog will cause trauma to their skin by excessive scratching, causing open wounds. Many dogs will have other affected areas, such as ears and feet, particularly with certain allergies.

There are numerous causes of alopecia in dogs. Here are some of the most common ones: