Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/590511
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 1 7 7 A s you may have heard, winters in Wisconsin are long. The Wisconsin year has been defined as "Nine months of winter—and three months of bad sledding." Natives have been known to quip "I hope summer happens on a weekend this year." Yeah, I know, har-de-har-har. The whole "frozen tundra" thing has been a bit overblown. Still, even with such beloved diversions as Packers football and Badgers basketball to help pass the time (Oh, what I wouldn't give to watch Frank Kaminsky and Sam Dekker work their magic on the hardwood one more year!), along about the middle of February you find yourself going a little stir crazy. And, doubling down on bad news, if you squint your eyes and stare at the horizon you see something else rearing its ugly head: The month of March. (Ice-fishing, by the way, is not a diversion. It's self-abuse.) But if the northern winters can seem interminable to those of us blessed with a big brain, opposable thumbs, and the ability to operate a remote, imagine how stultifying they must be for our gundogs. The hunting seasons are mostly closed, it's frequently too cold, too snowy, or both to make preserve hunting a viable option, and getting even a minimal level of aerobic exercise is a tall order. There's only so much we can do during these long winters to keep our dogs active and engaged, so if they appear a little bored . . . Well, can you really blame them? Trouble is, boredom in dogs, no less than boredom in people (idle hands and all that), has a tendency to lead to undesirable behaviors. One of these is excessive licking, which, if allowed to continue, can morph into the dermatology nightmare known as acral lick dermatitis or, more commonly, lick granuloma. By either name, it manifests itself as a raw, red, inflamed lesion, typically near the carpal or tarsal joints on the lower legs (analogous to our wrists and ankles), that's created by the abrasive action of the dog's tongue. The dog literally licks until the skin sloughs off, starting what one veterinary text describes as "a cycle of self-trauma, inflammation, and infection that may be promoted by an 'it hurts so good' effect by the release of endorphins from damaged cells." In other words, once a dog gets started, it triggers a vicious cycle that's damnably hard to stop. I offer as a case history the example of my English setter, Tina, who developed a nasty lick granuloma on her right hind leg this past winter. It finally cleared up (for which I'm thankful; some cases can persist for years), but it was a long, hard road, one on which we had to back up and start over before finding a treatment that Tina responded to—a typical scenario in dealing with this infuriatingly intractable condition. W hile lick granuloma can affect any dog, certain breeds appear to be at higher risk. Unfortunately for those of us in the gundogs camp, this high-risk group includes the Lab, the golden, the springer spaniel, and all three of the setters, Irish, English, and Gordon. And while many veterinarians believe that boredom is a major contributing factor, a host of causative agents have been identified, or at least implicated. Some are psychological (boredom, stress, anxiety, even the canine version of obsessive-compulsive disorder), and some are physical, but the consensus among veterinarians is that both play a role in the majority of cases. Establishing a direct cause-effect linkage isn't always possible, but the licking often starts at the site If your dog develops lick granuloma, prepare for a long haul. efore and after photos show Tina's granuloma lesion at its most extensive (top) and its complete disappearance following treatment with Apoquel. B Tom Davis u n d o g s G