I have a 10 year old lhasa apso and I have noticed in the last week or so he seems to have little wart-like spots on his head, under his chin and on his back.

I was going to ignore them as I was thinking it's an age thing (like old people getting warts) but today he was scratching one and made it bleed.

I bathed it in salt water but I'm unsure whether I should take him to the vet. I don't want to waste their time if it is simply his age, but obviously I don't want him to suffer and if he's going to scratch them he could get them infected.

Has anyone with an older dog got any experience of this?

when you say warts, would you say they are anything like a skin tag on his face?

from 9 onwards our old collie had these around her nose, chin and one near her eye, we just put them down to her age, they eventually fell off on their own.

she had some other bumps on her back and chest, which were like raised bumpy moles, but pink
she used to catch these sometimes when she itched, or i would catch them with the brush when grooming her
one of them produced a blackish greasy material, which we were never sure what it was, but if caught we used to clean them up and put a little savlon or germolene on them

if your boy is catching them it might be worth getting them looked at, but they could just be age spots/growths as you say.

if you're worried it's always worth having them checked over though, when is he due for a booster vacc. or worming treatment? perhaps mention it then if it's not too far off

Hi, thanks for the reply. They seem more like the raised bumpy moles you describe rather than skin tags.

The one he scratched seems to be healing well, I will clean it up again this evening and put more germolene on it (I actually put germolene on it yesterday but I was 100% sure you could use it on a dog so didn't mention it!)

He needs a check up in about a month for his arthritis so unless he gets them infected I will probably wait for that appointment to get them checked out.

My mums Spaniel whose about 3 years old or so broke out in "spots" just under his nose, it looked like a kind of dog "acne" like human teenagers get. It comes and goes and causes no discomfort (that I know of) But I don't know about in older dogs though. He is also the first dog that I've known of to get this.