tricolored sheltie/rocky mt summers
Hey folks,
My recently passed sheltie experienced this collie nose condition later in her life. Her nose was susceptable to crusting over at the ends, and sometimes the top, it could get quite crusty, it sometimes resembled a snake skin, meaning the nose would shed a whole piece, and if that happened it usually would swell up and bleed, not fun for our girl. We tried numerous things to help her through it. Then while visiting a bee forum, one of the beekeepers gave me some of their thick opague, non sticky unprocessed organic honey. After applying that to the area it cleared up. Honey is like an antibiotic, though gentler and w/o sides effects, and it has other healing properties, and my gal would tolerate that on her nose when the other remedies weren't appreciated at all, ha. After we understood it better, I found a natural sunscreen at our health food store and that seemed to curb it, for the first part of the season, but come August/September it could be brutal. Being on our mt property, 9k feet, and close to the sun, with the arid climate predisposes our pets to this I think, and tricolored shelties have more issues with this condition. In the bad drought year, it did spread to her eye area and got flaky, and lost pigment, the honey helped there as well. Never put sunscreen in the eye area, too delicate. It was never as severe using the honey/sunscreen combo as it was before finding that remedy. Hope that helps others that encounter this condition. My new sheltie puppy (5 mths) has a nose drying out at the ends, so here we go again. I think being SO dry and parched lately in our region is just HARD on skin and exposed area for dogs and humans.
