# What is up with this funky hairline?



## danecolor (Nov 22, 2010)

Riley (spayed female great dane, age 5) has had a strange hair pattern on her upper arm for a long time. i have been curious about it, but because she seems to be in good health, i have not paid too much attention to it. looking at older pictures, she did not have the funny hair pattern as a puppy (8 months to a year at least). however, she did have it back when she was on kibble, so i cannot imagine it has anything to do with her newer PMR diet. i cannot pinpoint when the hair went from being uniform to patchy like it is now. here are some pictures to give an idea of what it looks like:























the hair is extremely thick and almost tufted in the darker orange areas. it seems thicker than hair in nearly every other part of her body. does anyone have an idea of what this is caused by? or is it simply a weird hairline?


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## xellil (Apr 4, 2011)

Have you had her thyroid tested?

Also, take a look at this page - some of the patterns on here look like hers:
Canine follicular dysplasia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rebel has color dilution alopecia, but it doesn't have that pattern.


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## danecolor (Nov 22, 2010)

xellil said:


> Have you had her thyroid tested?
> 
> Also, take a look at this page - some of the patterns on here look like hers:
> Canine follicular dysplasia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
> ...


her thyroid has not been tested. that was one of my first thoughts back when i first noticed it but she does not exhibit any other symptoms of hyperthyroidism or hypothyroidism.

i looked at the website for canine follicular dysplasia, but she has neither a brittle coat, nor hair loss. the hair on her belly up to the armpits is thin but i was under the impression that that is not uncommon for great danes.

ETA: this is what i was thinking of: http://dolforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=59298
presence of belly hair seems to be about half and half.


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## xellil (Apr 4, 2011)

i don't have photos of Snorkels a few months ago, but she was totally bald on her belly, the backs of her legs, her ears, and her tail.

From this page, I thought I identified it as pattern alopecia that was something we'd just have to live with - this site has a ton of stuff on hairless, what it looks like, and what causes it:
Causes of Hair Loss (Alopecia) in Dogs

AND, she lost all her hair right AFTER we started PMR!!

A few months later, and Snorkels has a very full, very soft coat. it all grew back, and alot more and alot better. Did her body just blow off all the bad hair and grow back good stuff? Beats me. But she had a coat when I got her, and then she looked alot like a rat with a naked tail, and her skin is dark - not pink. Her ears were like flaps of leather.

I think there's just alot of reasons a dog can lose hair. Some like Rebel are easy - he's a blue Dobie, most go bald. Others, a little harder to tell.

For instance, cyclic alopecia sounds like of like your issue. Kind of and maybe not. Is the skin affected?


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## danecolor (Nov 22, 2010)

to me, when i look at her overall coat, she does not appear to have hair _loss_ at all. instead, it looks like she has one weird patch of very thick orange hair on each of her upper arms. if anything it looks like a pattern of hair overgrowth rather than hair loss, if that makes sense.

her skin is pretty good overall. a lot of her itchiness and redness disappeared when we started raw. her armpits and chest still look a little scaly and are more itchy than the rest of her body, but that was drastically reduced with raw. i can only imagine it is some sort of minor contact or environmental allergy. the actually area with the weird thick hair has completely normal skin, though.


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## xellil (Apr 4, 2011)

No telling - to me it looks kind of thin on the rest of her body but you would surely know better. I thought that link you posted meant she was bald on her stomach.

To me, if the skin is good, it may look funny but the skin is what counts. At least I tell myself that, since I have one dog that's just got peach fuzz on his body and another one that looked like a mutant cartoon character for a few months.

I definitely see the thickness, though, compared to the rest of it.


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## danecolor (Nov 22, 2010)

she definitely does not have a super thick coat on her whole body, but i think she is well within a normal range. her belly is not completely bald but the hair is very thin and fine on her underside and has been since we brought her home at 8 months.

everything about her appears healthy to me. that is why i have not ever actively pursued answers on her hair pattern in the past. i have just always been curious about her weird little arm tufts. maybe she just has a permanent weird hairdo for no reason :redface:


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## Chocx2 (Nov 16, 2009)

That is the first place my dog lost her hair, she was biopsied and it came back as an allergy, then I had her tested for allergies, also changed her diet to raw.....All her hair is back and fine....


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