View Single Post
  #15  
Old December 17th, 2013, 09:49 PM
Longblades Longblades is offline
Senior Contributor
 
Join Date: Apr 2007
Posts: 2,528
Quote:
Originally Posted by momoftwofuzzies View Post
My dog also suffers with allergies....they seemed to get really bad at the end of September and have continued since. I have put off doing an allergy panel because I've heard they aren't really reliable....but I think I might have to do it because I hate seeing him suffer. I've changed his food, given him benadryl and reactine (only work in about 20% of dogs and not in mine), tried other allergy supplements....nothing seems to work. It's very frustrating when you want to help them but don't know how!
What has your Vet suggested? Reactine helped my boy. I remember the days I was concerned about giving him that drug, if only that still worked. Then he needed Reactine with VanactylP, the P is prednisone which is a steroid. Then it became obvious he would need that all summer (environmental and seasonal allergies, fine in winter) and prednisone has a lot of bad side effects. So Vet suggested Atopica, also has side effects but not as bad as prednisone and not so likely to happen to most dogs. His first summer on Atopica he had mild immediate side effects, worse this past summer. I had to freeze it. Now there is a new one out, the name of which I cannot recall, but I will ask to try it next summer in hopes of avoiding the digestion and loose poop side effects. It still has long term side effects for some but still is said to be better than prednisone. But you can't let them itch and scratch and open up their skin and then possibly deal with secondary infections in the broken skin. Plus you can't bear, I'm sure, to see them in misery.

My Vet is a homeopathic Vet and he was not supportive of allergy testing or homeopathy. I agree as his reasoning was you have to not have the dog on anything to control the itch while you are trying a new remedy. Or you won't know what's working. But if it doesn't work your dog is in agony, itching. It's a tough choice.

Good luck.
Reply With Quote