Poor Reese! I came back from vacation two weeks ago and found that she had a Hot spot. Here some info from a site on what they are. Hot spots are surface skin infections caused when populations of normal skin bacteria grow and overwhelm normal resistance. They are generally circular patches that lose hair, can be swollen, may exude a smelly pus, and can be painfully itchy, causing the dog to scratch, lick, or bite to the point of self-mutilation. Untreated hot spots can spread and provoke a normally even-tempered dog to growl or nip when touched. The image above was not Reeses and hers was not the same. Nasty! We got her a lamp shade to prevent her from biting it but was worthless. We took her to the vet and the gave her a bigger one. She banged that up in like two day. But we kept it on, and recently took it off.