So cross with vets

[Strawberryshortcake40]

I have a lovely 6 year old cocker spaniel, a few months ago she had sore eyes and was scratching her ears and skin. Diagnosed with an ear infection and given antibiotics ear drops. It seemed to clear up, then flare up again. In the meantime she seemed really miserable and itchy. Vet diagnosed allergies, prescribed steroids. No change. Prescribed some kind of anti itch medication (£60 monthly). Since then we have had nearly three months on high dose steroids as well as this medication. I have been to the vets numerous times, told not to walk her in long grass as she was allergic, changed her diet to a hypoallergenic one, watched her get tired and podgy with all the medication. She's turned into an unhappy, grumpy dog.

Due back there tomorrow to discuss putting her back on steroids and to try other treatment.

Today she's been to the dog groomers. Who was furious with the vets. Ddog was massively infested with fleas (she has flea treatment every month but obviously not working, I haven't seen any in house and she is mainly dark with thick woolly fur). Dog groomer luckily is a good friend and assured me that while I was unlikely to spot them, it's one of the first things the vet should have checked for. Before putting her on months worth of unnecessary medication. Apparently if they had checked her skin properly to make an allergy assessment they would have noticed.

She's been treated now and I've thrown out all the medication, and the food she hates! But what now? I'm so cross at the months we have gone through, the cost of it all has been huge and DDog has been so unhappy. How can I take her back to a vet that missed something so obvious?

If your dog has fleas for that length of time, there is no way you could not notice them, they'd be jumping off her every time you touched her!!

OP often the vets can prescribe good flea preventative treatment which you can only get on prescription such as advocate. I subscribe to a monthly plan at our vets which includes all flea and worming treatments along with checkups etc

Also check out whether you are ok to use advantix with having a cat in the house as I thought it can be an issue for cats until it is dried but not certain on that.

Advocate is imidicloprid and moxidectin - imidicloprid is the active ingredient in Advantage so there's no point switching to that if it's not working for your dog.

We had a client once who's dogs fleas we just could not clear with any spot ons - was some sort of super flea strain - bravecto sorted them in the end.

Oh and Advantix also - imidicloprid

I use nexgard spectra for all my flea and worming treatments. One tablet every month.

I think you need to chat with your vets. Allergy testing is expensive. The first step would usually be a though skin exam with sellotape tests, skin scrapes etc to check for parasites before prescribing immunosuppressive medication with no diagnosis.

It could be an allergy towards fleas.

very shocked your vets didn't check for fleas though as usually that's the first thing they look for! However, trust me, I know there's a lot of useless vets out there... and vets who tell you "to assume it's environmental" usually come under the useless category! It doesn't matter the cost of treatment any half decent vet would tell you your options! And you NEVER assume anything - you rule things out before treatment. Because you don't want to treat your dog for something it might not even have. So in this case, your vet should've checked for fleas to rule a flea problem out yet they never. Instead your dog has been put on horrible food and awful medication for most likely very little reason.

As for all the medications, the steroids would've suppressed the dogs immune system - hence why things such as allergies/infections/ear problems etc tend to come back again, because you're not actually treating the problem.

Also I'm not gunna lie, I winced for your dog when you said you chemically flea treat every month.

Now you've treated against the fleas I would take her off all medication for the next 72 hours and see what she's like. If you see an improvement (which is sounds like you already are) then you know it's not been doing her any good.

sparkling advising someone to just take a dog off medications for 72hrs without veterinary approval is down right irresponsible. The fact those meds have included steroids makes it worse and I don't think op has actually clarified whether the dose has been correctly tapered down. As a human who has had long term steroids, I can tell you the side effects, if you forget them one morning or try to taper dose down too quickly, are horrible. It can cause pain everywhere, severe headaches (like as bad as true concussion), makes me feel sleepy in the day but cannot sleep at all come night time.

If op doesn't trust her vet now, she can take the dog elsewhere, to discuss trying the dog without the medications and ensure them being stopped is done safely.

Also I don't think the dog could have had fleas that long - irrespective of thick fur, once they've had them for weeks there is no way you would not see them jumping.

Plus it is entirely possible the dog has experienced more than one problem and that the vet was right to treat some or all of the issues as he did. We did not see the animal, we are not veterinarians and we cannot see the dogs medical notes, thus we don't know. Another veterinarian would be able to advise op, by seeing the dog, accessing the dogs medical notes and running any tests they felt necessary.

What flea treatment were you originally using OP (sorry if I missed it on the thread). Another one here saying flea allergy. My cat suffers terribly with it, the only solution is to keep on top of treatments & keep spraying the house. It can take three months to break the flea cycle, so even if treatments are up to date if a flea jumps on & bites her she'll still react, but the flea will die. Terrible that she was infested with fleas the poor thing.

I am not one to jump to the vet myself, but if your dog had a major flea problem for a few months, surely your entire family would look like a 'join the dots' book by now? You would have been eaten alive.

I agree I think if you had a flea infestation of several months you'd know about it. However. I'd recommend a skin workup and allergy testing so you know what yr dealing with