My older Yorkiepoo has too many warts. Are there non-surgical options?

Hello. Are these warts? These are the most common non-cancerous growths we see, & they are especially common on poodles. If surgery concerns you, please talk to your vet about freezing the growths off using a special liquid nitrogen product available to vets called Verruca Freeze. It is not super cheap, but it does not require any anesthesia to use. Thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach.

I would ask your veterinarian about the option to freeze the wart off. it is small enough that it may work. However, working near the eye with the freezing solution is risky because the freezing solution could go into the eye and that would be bad. There are cotton swabs you can freeze and then apply the cotton swab to the wart and see if a few treatments with this would help shrink the mass down in size. Unfortunately, surgical removal is typically the best way to get rid of these masses. I hope this helps!

Hi there. It's impossible to say for sure without seeing the growths you're talking about, but the most common skin growths on older toy poodles are sebaceous adenomas - these look like small, raised, irregular pink growths on the skin. These are not "warts," which have a different underlying cause altogether - they are benign tumors arising from oil glands in the skin. There is no medical way to get rid of them - the only thing that can be done is surgical removal by your veterinarian. I would recommend having your vet take a look at these growths to see if they are indeed sebaceous adenomas or something else. He/she can advise you on treatment options, and whether surgical removal would be recommended or not, depending on what is found.

Unfortunately, this is not likely to be something that you can do at home - cryosrugery is occasionally used for lesions like this in dogs, but this is not something that most general practitioners would have the necessary equipment to do. Over-the-counter products for human warts (like Dr. Scholl's "Freeze Off") are not approved for use on dogs, and would not be expected to be effective on sebaceous adenomas because these are quite different from warts at the cellular level - it's more likely that they would become irritated and inflamed by the treatment, rather than being successfully frozen off. I have never seen any other successful option for these growths apart from surgical removal as needed, unfortunately. If the growths are quite small, it may be possible to remove them with a local anesthetic and possibly a bit of light sedation - you could certainly talk with your vet about this option if you are concerned about costs, or risks of anesthesia.

Buddy may have developed an allergy making him prone to itching and secondary skin infections. If the warts are benign they probably don't require removal but Buddy may need additional antibiotics if they have been scratched open. I'd recommend having Buddy examined again to determine if he needs medication for allergies. There are newer medications available like Apoquel and Cytopoint that are very effective for itching related to allergies. A medication shampoo like Douxo calm may also be helpful. Thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach and I hope Buddy gets relief quickly!

Hello. This does not look like an aggressive cancer, it actually looks more wart-like. But the only to know definitively is with a fine needle aspirate. The biggest criteria to remove a growth is malignancy, but even benign growths can become large enough to cause significant issues. If this is very slow growing & remains a nonproblem for Tiny, then I would not be inclined to remove it surgically. It may be a good candidate to remove with liquid nitrogen without needing anesthesia. Thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach.

That does not appear to be a skin tag. It looks like a tumor. So the first step is finding out what it is. If he doesn’t tolerate anesthesia well you could ask your vet about possibly removing it with a local anesthetic or they could maybe freeze it off. There are no other options. It will not go away on its own. it needs to be surgically removed. Your dog may not have done one under one anesthesia protocol but may do ok with a different one.