Yes, I'm in Ireland. I walk my dog a few places - he often swims in a local river, otherwise we generally walk to parks and have a play with a ball or a Frisbee. You've got me thinking, though, Stilly; there's another stream nearby, and he seemed to get the itch first when he'd been playing in that. It has black algae in it, so I stopped letting him play in there; however, a few days later we were playing near it and I saw a couple of lads from the drainage department putting in booms and flat sheets of polystyrene. They told me the stream had been polluted with some kind of polycarbonates - petrol or kerosene or diesel - probably by a cab driver servicing his car upstream and letting the resulting liquids flow into a storm drain that debouches into the stream. My worry, and obviously the vets', is that the itch may spread. The cream is called Isaderm, and the ingredients are listed as a gram of gel with fusidic acid 5mg, Betamethasone (as valerate) 1mg, in 1g of gel. He doesn't lick it off, because when I put it on I immediately bring him for a short walk. The cream is up inside his paw and between the toes as well as on the pads, so this doesn't wipe it off, and by the time we come back he's not bothered to lick the feet. I'll ask the vet about vitamin D and how much is safe.
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