Heat, Humidity, Hot Spots and Hungry Mosquitoes!

"Don't get to close to me with that thing on", Oken says.

Ah, Summer; not a favorite time of year for us winter worshipers. To add to our 'misery', this summer has been excessively hot and humid which brought an army of ticks and now a bazillion (Neil likes words like that) little nasty mosquitoes, flies and horseflies that all helped lead to a rash (pardon the pun) of hot spots on our beloved furry companions.

Tuloon had the first, rather large, hot spots that began to appear on her stomach. Once shaved and cleaned, they healed relatively quickly. She didn't seem to mind that she had to spend all of her recovery time in the air conditioning. A small one appeared at the base of baby Aise's tail. This one healed without antibiotics once we shaved the area to allow the air to pass over it, keeping it dry.

Then there's Topa. Although she dislikes the plastic cone around her neck that is there to keep her from scratching her head, she's determined to keep the hot spots that began on her forehead from healing so that she can stay in the house with us. They have managed to heal twice now. All looks well and good and I remove the cone. Within an hour, she has scratched the area bloody yet again. The new strategy will be to keep the cone on her until it not only heals completely but the hair also grows back. This could take a while. She does get a break from the cone for a few hours each night when I can have my eye on her and we're inside. She LOVES this time and spends it locating then hiding all of the little dogs' toys, rolling on the sofa and burying her head in the cushions and playing with little Blueberry by getting as low to the ground as she can then trying to flip him over like a pancake with her head as the spatula. She's a very fun girl.

I've resigned myself to the fact that I now have to put on a bug shirt when I go out to do the dog chores, for the time being. I wish I could suit up each of the dogs so they could also get a respite from the bugs but not sure how long that would last. Do you think it's unrealistic of me to hope for a killing frost in July to put an end to the buzzing little beasts that are wreaking havoc on us all?