Rash on dog’s belly, bottom and genital area with scabbing and hair loss

Our dog Maya has had itching and a patchy rash slowly develop over the past few weeks. She has lost hair on parts of her belly and a large patch on her bottom – shown in pictures above. She has scabbing and redness around her nipples and around the genital area as well.

The scabs peel off easily, and there is no bleeding or seeping from the sores. She has had eye redness intermittently over the past week or so that I’ve noticed. She has itched and chewed/licked the areas, especially on the bum.

She had a similar rash a couple of months ago that seemed to go away on its own, but it may have just calmed down and come back. Some of them seemed to be in a oblong ring shape at the time (a few months ago), but did not seem like ringworm.

She is a purebred Newfoundland dog and just turned 1 year old on Tuesday. She was bought from a breeder at 8 weeks old.

She is up-to-date on all vaccinations from our local vet clinic. Some of the vaccines were delayed up to 2 months. She just had her first dose of K9 Advantix on 6/16/12. She is not using Heartguard yet.

She is outdoors quite a bit in different environments in Massachusetts. We live in an urban area but take her to woods and fields frequently, sometimes camping overnight.

She has had great energy all along, but for some reason she has weaned herself down to 2 meals a day for the past 2 months, whereas she used to eat 3 times a day. She only has about 1-2 bowel movements a day. She eats Innova Large Breed Dog Food – About 2 large cups a day now. She switched to this from the Innova Large Breed Puppy food at about 8 months old. The only other thing she eats is organic training treats and some occasional banana or celery.

She had 3-4 tick bites about 3 months ago. We pulled a couple off that were completely engorged and have kept the ticks in a jar since. We were not using any flea/tick protection at that time.

We do not give any supplements and she is not exposed to any chemicals that we are aware of, as we don’t use any in the home. I looked at the pictures from other posters and it just didn’t quite look like any of those.

The only other medical problem she’s had was a result of her swallowing some wood chips. She has blood in the stool and vomited wood chips. This was at least 4-5 months ago and she recovered from this quickly after some antidiarrheal medication and lots of fluids.

I appreciate any advice you can offer!

Thanks,
Lindsay T.