Ringworm, anyone have experience?

[KateBalesCardi]

Ddog2 was diagnosed with ringworm last June, prescribed topical shampoo to treat but she is old and on long term steroids so it's been extremely difficult to get rid of. She's lost lots of fur and has multiple skin issues anyway so it's difficult to say whether she's 100% clear or not but I thought we were finally getting on top of it.

I've never really been convinced it actually was ringworm as it's apparently highly contagious and yet Ddog1 and Dcat haven't caught it and neither have we. Now suddenly, after all this time and with Ddog2 appearing clear Ddog1 has what looks like the beginnings of the same thing and now I'm really confused. How can we (and Ddog1 in particular as they are joined at the hip) have not caught it in all these months and yet Ddog1 appears to have caught it now?

Will be seeing the vet obviously but they haven't seemed particularly well informed about it so far so thought someone here might have experience and be able to explain how/why this has happened? Neither of them go far these days (both elderly and not so mobile) so I'm as sure as I can be that Ddog1 hasn't picked it up elsewhere, I'm just so confused about why it's happened now after so long

Hopeful bump.

When my dog caught it as a puppy, the vet said that being very young or very old had an influence on developing it because the immune system is weaker. A friend of mine who was considerably older than me also developed it after touching my dog (before we knew he had ringworm). So maybe there’s something in that (anecdata, I know). I never got it, and me and my dog were and are joined at the hip.

I once caught ringworm from some stray kittens when I was overseas - but it didn't show up on me until a few months later, when I was run down. My theory was/is that my immunity was weaker and it caused the underlying infection to finally manifest physically. I kept getting it periodically for a couple of years after that - like the infection stayed in my body, but wasn't always visible. After that, I stopped getting actual ringworm, but started occasionally getting psoriasis-type patches all over my body, which I'd never had before either.

One thing I noticed was that having a lot of sugar in my diet seemed to trigger flare-ups. If I kept my diet clean, everything was fine. So if your doggos have sugary food at all - basically kibble, carby gravy-coated wet food, dog treats that aren't just 100% pure dried meat, etc. - maybe this has caused the underlying infection to show up.

It could be that you do have ringworm in your system, but it hasn't shown up physically. Or it might not be ringworm! I was around these kittens for nearly two months with no signs on me whatsoever, then it took another few months from there for it to show up on me.