A common household product may be what’s causing your white German shepherd to be losing chunks of its beautiful fur.
A veterinarian can overlook this cause, as was the case of our dog!
When my parent’s white German shepherd was a young adult, he began to mysteriously begin losing patches of his gorgeous fur.
We started noticing that his fur was falling out in certain areas. It was not a diffuse or evenly-distributed loss of fur. There were bare patches here and there.
I came up with the solution, but not before we took the white German shepherd in for a visit with the veterinarian.
The veterinarian couldn’t come up with an explanation. He sent us home with nothing to work with. Soon after, my cousin visited and suggested adding white rice to his diet.
This was part of her own diet, which she said put her multiple sclerosis into remission.
The white rice failed to remedy the problem.
An idea then struck me: Only an allergic reaction could cause fur loss in a dog.
The idea of an allergic reaction had come up before with the veterinarian, but it only went as far as that.
Just what the white German shepherd could be allergic to was never explored.
But I began noticing that the fur loss was in the very areas that the dog would lie on when on his big doggie pillow.
I also knew that periodically, my mother took the cover off the pillow and washed it in the washing machine — with standard laundry detergent.
“I bet he’s allergic to the laundry detergent!”
I added, “There’s a chemical from it in the pillow covering. He lies on that very often, and it can’t be coincidence that he’s losing fur in the very areas of his body that make contact with the pillow!”
I told my mother to start using a hypo-allergenic laundry detergent. Once she switched to the hypo-allergenic brand, the fur began growing back in!
My mother initially thought that it was “the diet” that my cousin had recommended. But eventually, my mother got tired of preparing all that rice and stopped giving it to the dog.
Despite that, the fur loss never recurred! This meant that the rice had no effect on the fur growing back in, and that it had to be an allergic reaction to the laundry detergent.
There’s a reason why there are hypo-allergenic versions of laundry detergents.
Many people, and dogs, are allergic to the chemicals in standard products.
Our German shepherd never again suffered from the loss of his beautiful white fur.
