cause of sapphie's rash?

i have been pretty stressed out by sapphie's worsening rash over the past couple of months. and to add to the problem, she had several bouts of aural hepatoma and has started to show signs arthritis. i noticed she tripped more often whenever i bring her for long walks or when she runs around the house. and to clear her rash, she had been given steriods, anti-fungal and anti-infammatory tabs, topical cream, medicated shampoo, and so on in the past couple of months... the vet even suspected that she could have developed an allergy to her dry food and with the vet's advice, i have changed her diet to a hypoallergenic diet. but i have not seen any improvement in her skin condition for everytime i stop some medication, the rash would flare up drastically... i am really at my wits end!

and as i was clearing the washing area in the kitchen 2 days ago, it struck me that the cause of sapphie's rash could possibly be the piece of cloth that i usually use to clean her paws. you see, since she was a puppy, i had trained her to walk to the kitchen every time she returns from outside. this is to allow me to use a damp cloth to clean off off any dirt from her legs before she goes to the living room. and after cleaning her, i would leave the cloth by the sink to dry. i would change the cloth regularly once it gets too dirty. thinking back, in recent months, the cloth has been getting rather dirty pretty fast. on top of that, i had also noticed the cloth to have a slimy feel and had suspected that it was due to some fungal growth. but apart from washing it more regularly, i had continue to use the cloth to clean sapphie's paws...

i had started using disposal damp hand towels to clean sapphie's paws these two days. let's hope i am right. let's hope the rash slowly clears.

:-)