Hi all,
I have a 6 yr old, very large breed dog. He's had food allergies for years, but all well controlled on hypoallergenic food. He also gets what we think are recurrent soft tissue injuries of his front ankle areas on both legs (although mainly right) for the last 3 yrs, and after a scan with a specialist last year to make sure, they concur with the soft tissue diagnosis with a small amount of arthritis starting; no biggie they said and nothing more to do.
He had a bad allergic reaction to what we now think is longer grass (after being fine for the last 6 yrs) about 3 weeks ago and after piriton didn't touch the sides, we took him to the vets. He also, quite coincidentally had a sore front leg on the same day. The vet that we saw (not our usual) asked if we were insured, looked at his skin, squeezed his paw hard (he yelped) and then promptly said he needs monthly injections of cytopoint and librela. She then tried to make him sit still for the injections and he wouldn't (he hates them and is not tough at all!) so I was then sent out of the room whilst 2 nurses and her then injected him. He was so bad by this point that she's now given trazodone and gabapentin to 'calm him down' for the next lot. He was also given steroids to reduce the rection that his body was having. Unfortunately these gave him uncontrollable weeing incontinence so he ended up more miserable than when he'd first been in. DH is very annoyed that I felt railroaded into the injections/treatment and is definitely not happy about having to calm the dog for the injections that we're not even certain we want to continue with.
I was back for a 2 week review today and despite trying to explain at length and multiple times that:
a. we're not sure on the cytopoint, as suspect that it's grass, hence can keep away from long grass and avoid the reaction.
b. his legs are fine and he's not been in pain since the day after the vet visit, so definitely not happy with the librela.
c. definitely not happy with having to calm the dog with drugs to get a monthly injection, esp if we're not sure he actually needs the bloody things, she seemed to galactically miss my point on every turn. "We can make him calm, we can take him to the car park, we can give him lots of treats, you can feed him a 1/4 of his food so he's starving and won't notice the injections". She also suggested that instead of the librela for the (imaginary) arthritis, she can give a pain killing injection. FFS - he's not in pain and I don't want any injections! She kept saying, we don't have to do it monthly, we can add on 2 days each time to increase the time between - again, so not the point.
I'm trying not to be one of those 'oh my poor baby' owners, who can't see what's best for their pet, despite an expert telling them, but she is really annoying me now and I don't know if it's me/DH being daft or her just not listening. She said that we can go onto apoquel for the allergies instead (I know the side effects and not great, but would do it if very severe), but she doesn't like it as much as cytopoint.
Does anyone have any personal experience of this kind of scenario and please tell me what you did. I definitely want what's best for the dog but don't want to make his life miserable every month for a small gain that we could get by just changing his walks.