# mosquito like bumps all over body after being outside in woods and tall grass



## Riley

We have a 6 month old male pup that loves being outside. Our back yard backs up to woods and some tall grass. He loves roaming around through the woods. Two days ago when he came inside, we notices these bumps that looked like he had been bitten or stung all over by a mosquito. They appear to be under the skin. He's scaratching them some, but it doesn't seem to be driving him crazy. He threw up last night and it was just his dog food that appeared to have been sitting on his stomach all day. HE seems to be acting almost normal, playful as usual. Does this appear to be an allergic reaction to something he has eaten or some week he has rubbed against. He is on Frontline. Should we try Benedryl? I've called a couple of emergency vets and they want to see him of course. We're thinking about keeping inside today except for using the bathroom and seeing how he is in the morning. any ideas?
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Today we have kept him inside except to use the bathroom and then a walk in the afternoon. The bumps have gone away completely. He started acting normal today and ate and drank fine all day. About an hour ago I heard him run into the great room and he had thrown up again. It looked like his food was still in chunks and never digested. It also looks like it was all he ate today. We are still giving him dry puppy food. HE doesn't seem wimpy, but he can't be getting any nutients out of his food. Any ideas?


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## Kailua

HI Riley,
My guess is that your puppy had an allergic reaction to the grass blades scratching his belly. When Snickers romps through the tall grass, he gets small bumps/rash under his belly. My vet told me to give him Benadryl to alleviate the itchiness. I also wash him with Hexadene shampoo to soothe his skin. You may want to check with your vet just in case. Snickers loves jumping in the tall grass whenever we go to the dog park.


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## gunnr

Riley

My first inclination is to go with biting gnats, or mosquitos. However there are a few questions;

Has he always been on frontline? 
Was he shampood recently?
Is he running a temp?
Was there any grass in the dog food he yarked up last nite?
Have there been any "yellow sticky balls" in his fur that look like pollen, but could in fact be Bot Fly eggs?


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## richmondestates

Leo gets it a lot. Its normall where they have snagged there skin slightly and there is a little scab which is raised under the coat. This seems very likely as you said hes in the woods a lot. Brambles, braches, twigs etc cause it.


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## treetops1974

Rio (1 yr 9 mths) gets bumps also. I first noticed them last spring. My initial thoughts were bug/spider bites. We moved his crate and cleaned his bed - and the bumps went away. This sping similar situation ... but the bumps haven't gone away. Our vet has not idea what they could be. There is another thread on the forum that offers some good advice/solutions. We too have Rio in the field/outdoors quite a bit and I'm not ruling out bug bites ... however, the bumps seem very similar to what horses get called rain rot. I spoke with a friend who has a horse and she suggested witch hazel. I will give it a try and report back. The bumps don't puss or bother Rio - so I'm not too concerned ... but would like to know how to deal with it.


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## sarahaf

Gunnr, The words "bot fly eggs" kind of icked me out...


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## blue water bucko

Our 2 year old V hound Kona has recently shown small bumps too. She is outdoors for 3-5 hours per day running around our very large and partially wild 1 acre back yard hunting and chasing anything that moves. We are in Florida and it's pretty buggy at times. 

Anyway.....Her bumps, look and feel like bug bites or even hives that appear as small disturbed areas below her fur.....I can pick at the marks and it feels like a mosquito bite with a raised bump. I can't find any bugs......and the bumps seem to be located in isolated areas on her chest/neck, on her hind quarters on both sides in exactly the same place and on her shoulder blades on either side in exactly the same place, almost like a rash. Looks like maybe a little hair thinning on her neck/chest from scratching...but she doesn't scratch much. The Vet thought allergy and gave her some antihistamine. Seemed to help, but not cure the problem. Been switching out dog foods to mix it up. No results. 

One note. I have been giving her flea baths once a week and wonder if she's allergic to the flea bath? I changed the flea bath soap recently to a milder version with oatmeal, but still getting the bumps. She gets rinsed off every night with warm water before she comes indoors. She's squeaky clean before she raids our bed each night. 

Another note.... has me worrying about Mange Mites. We recently had a Coyote that I had to chase out of the orange trees in our back yard at 3 am. Kona smelled it from indoors and became agitated so I let her out the back door and she tripped the motion sensor lights (her standard procedure) so she could see to the back fence....when she saw the Coyote she stopped dead in her tracks and came back to the porch when I called her, so I know there was no contact at all. I used a spotlight and and the Coyote looked pretty manged up. By the time I got the shotgun and drove to the back in my truck he had run off. We are in the city not the country....but have an acre of ground out back.....we are near a golf course that has a Coyote problem so they stray this way on occasion. Wondering if proximity contact from 300' away could transfer mange mites? She did go sniff around the area after the Coyote ran off. 

Those are the details.... 

Anyone want to pick through my statements above and offer up ideas? 

All welcome.....trying everything I can think of before going for a skin scraping at the Vet for Mange Mite test.


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## finch

This happens to Finch every time she is out running in fields and tall grass. They are often all over her belly and spread up onto her thighs and sometimes her lower back. We just give her 2 Benedryl tables every 12 hours for a couple days and they go away without ever bothering really her.


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## Ozkar

Even I get little reactions if playing in long grass. Astro and Zsa Zsa, unlike Ozkar, don't normally react to grass. But if we are charging through tall grass for some time, we all end up with lumps and bumps.......


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## flynnandlunasmom

Sounds like the hives our allergic guy get sometimes too. We think it's due to rass or grass seed. Most vets say to treat with Benadryl and I think that works for most. For us, they got too bad and we had to do a short course of Prednisone but hopefully that's not the case for you. The good thing is, for ours it's a seasonal allergy and not year round.


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## R E McCraith

Here in KY we are at the height of the spyder season - with a heavy dew in the morning you can see the webs in the tall grass every where - after a long run I wipe PIKE down with a clean towel - cuts down on the number of bites he gets - just a fact of life for us !


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## Vizsla Baby

Sounds like seasonal allergies to my and lots of people on here have problems with them. Our V has the same problem - but in the Spring time. 

We give her Benadryl a couple of times a day and that helps. (2 tablets for total of 50 mg and she is 47 pounds & full grown so adjust the dose for your dogs weights). I'm sure that will help.

Some people claim it makes their dog crazy or tired. It has no effect on my dog at all. She's the same personality with or without it.


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## finch

Vizsla said:


> Some people claim it makes their dog crazy or tired. It has no effect on my dog at all. She's the same personality with or without it.


Same here - Benedryl has no effect on Finch either.


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## Duxwig

Our V had the same issues, developing bumps and we took to the vet and they said it's hives. They did an allergy test and found out foods he's allergic too. There should be a more environmental allergy test but we figured there is no real way to prevent him if he flares up from the grass/pollen. We straightened out his hives w/ the food but they still persist due to outside allergens when he goes to the dog park.

We tried benadryl but found it didn't really do anything for the marks to make them go away, no change in behavior either. We DID have the doc prescribe us *Temaril P* which was a sort of steroid/anti-inflammatory I believe. Worked WONDERS. The only thing we found that would make the hives actually go away. When they're bad we put him on a 30mg dose twice a day for 2 days then slowly ween it down 15mg at a time. Harsh on their kidneys I believe if you take them off it abruptly since it messes w/ their adrenal glands if I can remember. Doc said only side effect we should see is increased urination. And by increased...we're talking almost every hour(unless sleeping) he needs to go out to pee.


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## Cannon

Hi,
Just had the exact same problem with Reilly. Bumps all over that went up and down for three or four days. And vomiting that commenced after 24hours. Being a vet nurse I had seen similar allergic reactions before so I left him for 12hrs first to see if it would go down - he was perfectly happy in himself just a bit itchy.
When the vomiting started he actually became quite quiet so I took him into work to get people's opinion. Everyone said it was something he had eaten that had caused a serious allergenic reaction. All his blood test were fine and nothing showed on abdominal X-ray - we wanted to rule out he hadn't eaten something that had got stuck. He got short course of steroids and a stomach protector and was as right as rain after a couple of days. It's worth taking him in and hopefully if you have insurance it will be covered. We never found what it was he had eaten - very strange. But he definitely got more lethargic and went down in weight without medication. I wouldn't recommend any human medicine self prescribed - they are so dose specific and you might make things worse.
Good luck!


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## fullscale

we have a similar problem with bumps all over the back, it seems that shampoo sets it off quicker and worse than anything else she is 9months and its been a long process to find out, we rarely give her meat now as this could have been a cause also, i still think the grass seeds set it off but not as bad as shampoo, we use some nonallergenic stuff now fingers crossed no more bumps.
we also use the non alergenic dry foods and she gets a lot of fresh fish and tinned tuna mixed in as its cheaper than tinned dog food.


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