I think my dog has a yeast infection on his paws. What is the treatment?

Original Question: We have a 10.5-year-old Labrador Retriever who had a bacteria and yeast infection inside her hind left paw. We took her to the vet and we put her on Vetolexin 250 for two weeks and now it is two weeks later and we have seen very little improvement. We also had six lasers sessions to speed up healing. It is two weeks later and with very little success. Have we missed anything and is there something we should try to heal this? Thank you. - Charles

Jul 30, 2017

Hi Charles,

Thanks for your question. Sorry to hear about this.

My first reaction is that there might be something missed here. The drug that you mention, Vetolexin, is for bacterial infections. It won’t eliminate yeast.

Yeast infections in dogs require anti-fungal medication, not anti-bacterial. I first would recommend that you have your vet perform a ‘skin scraping’ to confirm the yeast which I suspect has already happened. If the infection is localized to one paw, then you could consider picking up an over-the-counter anti-fungal cream from the drug store and apply it twice a day for a month. Since this is a protracted therapy, again I would recommend you first confirm that the yeast is still present. Furthermore, I would recommend you check the other paws for yeast with the skin scraping since these infections are often found on multiple paws. The laser therapy for the skin condition could be beneficial, but if yeast is present, this may not even resolve the problem. If yeast is present, either topical or systemic anti-fungal therapy is needed and is usually implemented for at least a month or more. It’s very important that a follow-up skin scraping be performed to confirm that the yeast has resolved. If even one yeast is found on a microscope slide from the skin scraping, then I would continue therapy.

So my strong recommendation is to confirm and resolve the paw yeast infection and then monitor the condition. Treating it with anti-bacterial therapy, such as anti-bacterial shampoos, foot baths, creams and systemic medication while treating for the yeast is reasonable since a bacterial infection was confirmed as well.