Lorin -- Have you visited the vet yet? Fleas can many times cause some of
the problems you are talking about. If you have a flea problem there are
many new products on the market such as Advantage that are not absorbed into
the blood stream and can work well. If you do have fleas on the surface
under control but he had them when he came there is a very strong
possibility that he could have internal parasites. From fleas dogs get
tapeworm. Many times you see no visiable evidence of this unless you know
what to look for. Certainly one of the symptoms is a dog that is unthrifty
-- one that eats but gets little nutrition from the food -- the tape worms
absorb it all. The tapeworms break off in tiny segments that can look like
a rice kernel. On fresh stools it is possible to see these still moving.
And these also can be left around the anus or crawl out of the rectum.
These tape segments around the anus can cause some discomfort and itching
to the dog causing them to bite at their anus.
Second, bad teeth can also be a sorce of some of the tear staining. Bad
teeth contain many bacteria and when a dog bites his skins, coat etc. the
bacteria from this can be left on the coat and well as the stain present in
the saliva. Hope this helps -- Bobbie