Options in Dealing With Corns

January 29th, 2007 • Related • Filed Under

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Filed Under: Medical

Casino came to us with several corns…at least one corn across three different feet. One foot had no less than three corns on it. Corns can be extremely painful for the dog and may be overlooked as a cause of lameness by many vets inexperienced with greyhounds or canine corns. There are several approaches to treating corns from a variety of home remedies to surgery. I managed to eliminate some of the corns using a home remedy solution of Dremeling, Dr. Scholl’s corn remover and Protecta-Pad.

Small corn

For my home remedy I use a dremel just like I use it for nails (with the sanding attachment, 60 grit) and I dremel the corn down until it’s level (or on big corns, you can get a bit below the level of the pad). Obviously you want to be careful not to actually dremel the paw pad itself so I use the upper edge of the sanding bit at an angle to the corn. Just tap it on the corn b/c it dremels down pretty quickly and you don’t want to over-dremel. Our dremel goes up to level 10 and I use it between 3 & 4 (just like I do for nails). This will not hurt the dog since the corn itself doesn’t have any feeling…occasionally I do make contact with the surrounding pad tissue and it’s not a huge deal, I just try to avoid it if I can. I dremel the corn any time it goes beyond the level of the pad. Some corns grow faster than others so it can be anywhere from every day to once a week.

After I dremel I apply a drop of Dr. Scholl’s Corn Remover(over the counter). They make a product specifically for dogs, but the human stuff is wayyyyyy cheaper and easier to get.  The ingredients are the same with the only difference being that the salicylic acid in the human version is a bit higher content. This will not hurt the dog as it’s intended to be used on human skin which is much more sensitive than pad tissue. In the beginning, I put a drop on once per day for 14 days. I put the corn remover on in the morning and at night I apply Protecta-Pad lotion to the corny pad (it’s a great pad conditioner for all the feet!). You can buy Protecta-pad at Petco (but not at Petsmart the last time I looked).

Then I take a week or so off of the corn drops (the manufacturer recommends not using the corn remover more than 14 days in a row). During the off week I’d just dremel as needed and apply protect-a-pad once per day. If the corn is still there I continue the regimen of dremelling & protect-a-pad and put the corn remover on every other day or so until the corn is completely gone.

Large, untreated corn that's not well defined.

Some stubborn corns don’t seem to respond to this home remedy, or respond only by shrinking, but not going away. Your other alternative is to have the corn hulled out by your veterinarian. Casino had four corns hulled out in one day and showed great tolerance to the procedure. There was no blood and it took our vet about 10 minutes or so to do all four corns. Champ had a corn hulled and that resolved the problem permanently, as it never grew back.

For more information on hulling corns, go to Grassmere Animal Hospital’s Corn Hulling page. I would recommend printing the information out for your Vet’s review. I’m sure all vets will vary, but ours simply charged us an office visit fee to do the procedure.

Two untreated corn on the same foot

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There Are 8 Responses So Far. »

1. 

   Comment by Sexo Colombiano on 4 August 2009:

   emm. 10x ))
2. 

   Comment by Lori Rose on 5 April 2011:

   Hello,my name is Lori Rose and I am a Homeopathic Practitioner with a huge love and interest in greyhounds/sighthounds. I was asked recently to research and formulate a homeopathic treatment for corns for some people who had greyhounds with this nasty problem. The success has been amazing! Owners who had exhausted all other treatments including surgery are delighted with the results this treatment has given. This is one person from sighthounds for life had to say about the treatment on the Sighthoundsforlife website- (below) I am passionate about helping our hounds and am delighted to have developed a treatment so natural yet very effective. If I can help please let me know. I also treat many other conditions. I will have a website up and running soon where people can purchase my treatments but until then you can place orders by just contacting me on this email.

   Look forward to hearing from you and being able to help.

   Kind Regards,

   Lori

   Lori Rose Lic ~BSH Homeopathic Medicine

   Corns !!!!!!
   For those of you who don’t know (and there can’t be many) my lovely old winnie suffers greatly with corns. She has suffered badly for the last 3 years and has had one removed while under a GA for something else. This gave her 6 weeks of being corn free but then returned with such ferocity that within 2 months she had to have her toe amputated.
   We have been fighting her corns with everything we could but to no avail.
   A short while ago I asked Lori (lori rose homeopathy) if she would work on a remedy for me to try. Being the wonderful person she is, she immediately said she would research and put together a remedy that would hopefully help winnie.
   3 weeks ago she sent me some oil remedy to rub into the corn and 2 oral remedies for winnie to take. For the first week or so nothing seemed to be happening but then the corn seemed a little softer and less prominent.
   I can now tell you all……………..

   THE CORN IS NO MORE…….YIPPEE

   I am completely over the moon about this and can’t thank lori enough..I had hoped for a reduction but never in my wildest dreams did I think it would go so soon.
   If any of you have hounds with corns you will know the pain and sheer discomfort these things cause our beautiful hounds and to have her free of them is sheer magic. thank you so so much Lori. you are an absolute star

   Pauline Presley – Sighthounds for life.
3. 

   Comment by lori on 6 June 2011:

   Email address for anyone interested in this treatment is

   lorimrose@aol.com

   This has become a very successful and popular treatment worldwide
4. 

   Comment by Kirsty on 14 July 2011:

   Hi, I live in Australia and we recently adopted a greyhound called Alice who has fitted in with our life so perfectly that we are devasted to be told that due to the sheer amount of corns she has had and still is getting that we would be best to put her down – I am not giving up without a fight and so started researching about these horrible things and I have come across your treatment – I would like to know if your treatment is available anywhere to purchase in Australia or whether I can purchase some from you – we will do whatever we can to help Alice. Your article has given us hope that there is an alternative to Surgery and putting her to sleep. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
   Thanks
   Kirsty
5. 

   Comment by michele on 18 July 2011:

   Hi, Kirsty!

   do not put your baby down–you can help her! My greyhound also had terrible corns all over many of her pads, and I researched it, looking at Grassmere Hospital’s site, and hulled them myself. Soaking the pads in water, epsom salts and water, olive oil and water (depends on which you like) really works, and then you can work away at removing what you can bit by bit. I have gotten all her corns out except for one–an amazingly stubborn one and it is casuing Star a lot of pain. But we keep working at it. I recently purchased the greyhound hyaluronic acid and greyhound cream from Murray Avenue Apothecary (just type that address in and it’ll come right up. People within my greyhound rescue org are citing amazing results with it and so I just started that the other day. I also bought boots (not Therapaws, just regular doggie boots) and I find that really helps her on a walk. I may buy her a Therapaw for that one foot, though. One4 thing I have noticed with Star is that every little grain of sand seems to want to dig its way into her pads, so I clean her feet after every walk. (Many grey owners think that the corns are actually tissue growth around a foreign object that has dug its way up into the pad.)
6. 

   Comment by michele on 18 July 2011:

   Kristy;
   Murray Ave will send to anywhere, btw. I am up in northern Canada and got the cream one week after ordering. They are fantastic to deal with.Don’t give up!
7. 

   Comment by Kirsty Serotzki on 23 July 2011:

   Hi Michelle!

   Thanks so much – we have researched heaps and we are currently looking at getting Alice some Therapaws for her just to give her a level of comfort – we are also looking into the Dremel Drill and trying to reduce the size of them a bit. We will keep working on it – I have also contacted the Murray Ave – Thanks again for your help!

   Kirsty
8. 

   Comment by Fran on 6 August 2011:

   Kirsty
   We live in Melbourne and we are using the treatment obtained from Lori Rose on my son’s greyhound Edie. We are thrilled with the results and Edie is putting her full weight on her paw and her whole demeanour is back to the happy prancing dog she was.
   Fran

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