Bald Patch

This post is not about my cat, rather one of my dogs.

I know this is not about cats, but recent discussions about ringworm have got me thinking and I thought you all might be able to brainstorm with me. I put it in this section so that it would, hopefully, be seen by more people, rather than putting it in Cats and Other Pets. Mods, if you want to move it, go ahead. 

Back story;

Sadie is one of my dachshunds, she came to me from a less than desirable breeder back when I didn't know a thing about puppymills and the like. Ever since she was about 6 months old, she's had a bald patch on her chest. At first, I didn't think anything of it. I thought maybe her chest was rubbing on something when she jumped up on things, but even when I wrapped it or stopped her from jumping up on things, it never got better. I have also watched her closely when she does jump on things, rarely does her chest even skim the edge of whatever she is jumping up onto. 

Back in 2007, I brought her into the vet for something completely unrelated and mentioned the spot to the vet. At the time, it was a different vet than I normally saw, and since then I have switched clinics a few times. They scraped around the spot and found some flea dirt, but no fleas. We just assumed it was a flea allergy. Over the years, I never thought to get it looked at again, even though it has gotten quite a bit larger. 

Here are some pictures of it:

This one is from 2007



This one is from last year, I think. You can see how much bigger it's gotten and you can see that Fynn has a bit of thinning hair on his chest too. 



Here's a close up from the same day as the last picture.



Any ideas on what it could be? I'm going to have the vet check it out next time we're in. It's dry, kind of looks scaly. No oozing or puss. Just hair loss and dry. 

If she was a cat then overgrooming might be the culprite, but I'm not sure she can like there!

To be honest, I'm not even sure if she could, lol. My dogs don't really groom themselves though, from what I've seen. They'll occasionally lick their paws or their back legs, but no grooming. 

Since it's gotten bigger and never really had a remission state, even when I was wrapping it or stopping her from jumping on things, I was wondering if it might be something along the lines of a very mild fungal infection or something like that. It's interesting that Fynn has thinner hair there too, he is a good bit bigger than Sadie and he NEVER hits anything when he jumps up. They don't have blankets in their crate, so it can't really be an allergy to laundry soap. I'm stumped!