Ear Margin Hair Loss - Page 2

As far as my dog goes, he's never eaten dog food with chicken.  I have another dog with a more sensitive tummy (not a GSD) so to keep things easy I feed all my dogs the food that this dog does best on, a Lamb and Rice "limited ingredient" diet.  It contains lamb, rice, and a few preservatives and that's it.

scabies?
too much time in a crate?

My dog has never had scabies (never had any sort of parasite) and isn't kept in a crate, he has free reign of the house and when we're away at training or in transit, he's in a crate that's larger than he needs. He's not crated at hotels.
 

A friend of mine had a dobie that was placed for training, come to find out the dog stayed in a plastic dog create for 22 hours a day, her ears lost fir on edges.

I had a dog come back from a co-owner with scabies, and while treating her, another dog got them. The second dog showed loss of hair on the edges of ears.

Flies and mosquitos can also cause ear loss, but not as likely in the winter in Colorado.

Intact females can also loose hair due to hormonal cycles.

22 hours a day?  Poor animal!  Probably had bad callouses and hair loss in other places too :(

My dog's dry ear margin is vasculitis but there can be various causes for that.  Vasculitis is a circulation issue, not a dermatological issue or parasite.  It comes and goes, doesn't itch, doesn't really effect his appearance (I've seen way, way worse), and all of his health tests have checked out (including a full thyroid panel run by Dr. Dodds) so I generally just let it be.  It seems to come back when we have very cold, dry winters like the one we just had.  Other years I may not see it.  I've shown the dog on an off through the years and it's never really affected his appearance, he is still V-rated KKL1 with a CH and leg towards GRCH.  He did have fly strike as a puppy one summer, for some reason they would not leave him alone (didn't land on my other dogs) but the symptoms were a bit different, he had little bites inside his ears and not just dry ear margins.  We use a pet bug repellant that summer and the flies haven't come back (but we now live in a different spot, different soil and different bugs).