Any experience with allergies in dogs?

[MaggieAndHopey]

We have an adult rescue dog, she's around 5/6 (hard to say exactly), I don't know very much about her history because she's a rescue. But she is a lovely girl and has settled in to our family so well. She's a mixed breed black and white dog, medium sort of size.

Over the last couple of months we began to notice that she scratches quite a lot. We've ruled out fleas. The scratching got more frequent; we thought at first that it was because she's gone from having no baths ever to having a bath a week (roughly) because she loves to roll in stinky things on walks. So we switched to a gentle shampoo with oatmeal and we added in an Omega 3 food supplement (Yuderm), which she's been on for about a month now.

We took her to the vet to get her checked out, and she was prescribed Apoquel, which from what I understand isn't an antihistimine or steroid, but has a different action. Anyway the impact on the scratching was immediate - completely stopped it, which suggests that maybe there's sort of allergy going on.

It's good to know there's something we can give her to help, but it's obviously not a long-term solution. She has a follow up vet appointment next week and I'm going to ask about allergy testing, so we can try to narrow down what she's reacting to. Ideally it would be something I can easily reduce her exposure to but it might well not be. Or apparently immunotherapy might be an option.

I just wondered if anyone else has any experience with dogs and allergies and what treatment options you've explored? Feeling a bit worried about it all. I have decent pet insurance at least!

(I should say, we have had her since January)

My old lab had allergies to dust, grass and several other things. We had to wash her in a special shampoo and she also had injections which I think were to desensitise her. The injections were extremely expensive and I think were flown in from USA - all a bit vague as this was about 10 years ago so treatment has probably moved on

thank you. That sounds like the immunotherapy I've read about - injections of small but increasing amounts of an allergen. Did the injections help her?

@MaggieAndHopey. Yes - the injections made a real difference

Dpup is allergic to wasp stings and we’ve been told to give him human piraton.

@MaggieAndHopey allergies can be dietary. Many dogs are apparently allergic to chicken. Worth switching food to see if it helps.
Also consider environmental factors. If it varies throughout the year it can be pollen etc. I would trip and avoid the rolling in stinky stuff so you’re not washing so often. It’s really not good for their skin.
Good luck.

“It's good to know there's something we can give her to help, but it's obviously not a long-term solution“

Actually it can be... my last dog was on it longterm for a dust mite allergy.

We saw four vets told us that our dogs itching and bald spots were caused by "allergies" but it was in fact Mange - the Apoquel and Citapoint injections stopped the itching but gave the MAnge months to take hold and nearly killed the dog - the Vet agreed that there were all the signs of Mange but refused to treat him and insisted on doing a biopsy to test for Mange which was inconclusive.

We went to a new vet and did not recount the history but he instantly diagnosed Mange and treated it with one Bravecto Tablet - strangely enough this was a vet who did not sell Citapoint injections....

If your dog has bald patches then you might be able to detect Mange -
put Vaseline on the patches and surrounding fur on a dry dog - if you see blood spots instantly appear the that is the mites burrowing to get away from drowning.

In any event i would advise treating your dog with vet strength flea mite tick treatment because as soon as you use apoquel you no longer will get the signs of these problems until the dog is very very ill.

Thanks so much for replies everyone. Vet follow up appointment is on Tuesday so I have lots of things I can ask about.

@ruthieness what you say about apoquel is basically my main concern - 1) the apoquel is stopping the itch but she was itchy for a reason and I want to know what that is, and 2) I worry about other conditions it can mask, though I totally take your point @tabulahrasa, and if it does turn out she's got a hard to treat allergy I wouldn't rule it out.

I don't think it's mange but worth asking the question on Tuesday I guess. She doesn't have any bald patches, her skin actually looks OK apart from one sore patch under an armpit which she was repeatedly scratching. But she was scratching everywhere really.

For our dog it started with the armpits....

We found coconut oil a great treatment for skin problems -
www.aldi.co.uk/coconut-oil/p/070350230446600
The dog can eat it too so no problem if the dog licks it off.

We also gave him fish oil.

I wouldn’t want a dog on apoquel long term if I could find another option.
We ended up seeing a dermatologist.
Definitely definitely no fleas? Some flea stuff is ineffective. Even what some vets sell!
Also worth considering any scents in the home. What you wash with etc.

My dog had terrible allergies that even the RVC couldnt help with- in the end we did atopica meds for the 6 months of each year that her allergies flared (grass we believe-very sore and itchy feet and legs)
As she has gotten older the allergy has lessened and we now only need the tablets for a month or two each year-tha kfully as they aren't cheap.

The other suggestion I have is to take photographs every few days of the dogs face and any problem areas - then you can see if it is improving or getting worse -

We have a dog with dietary intolerences.

We:

a) had bloodwork done to test for environmental allergies. They came back clear. Blood testing for food allergies apparently not very effective.

b) Put him on a vegan diet (unde the care of a top dermatologist) to remove all meat from his diet as intolerances are most likely to be meat. Keep him on that for several weeks until all problems cleared.

c) Experimented with introducing one single meat protein at a time, for several weeks, watching closely for signs of intolerences. We are still working through them. Chicken and beef both give him the runs and terrible wind - so they are on the banned lost. Venison and cheese (obs not meat!) seem ok so they are tentatibely allowed at the moment.

It's been a looong process!

Thanks again for replies. @ruthieness good suggestion re photos.

@OneFiveFour that sounds like a very long road indeed! What alerted you to the problem in the first place? Had it been present since you got him or did it develop over time?

Our terrier was very allergic fleas as well as to something else - the cat, dust mites, don't know - as well some of the things in most dog foods. We put her on a sensitive dog food and gave her half a Piriton every day for about a decade and she was fine like that.

We have a large terrier type that has lots of allergies. Our previous vet said not to bother with allergy tests as it would bring up lots of things, some of which would be minor. He suggested giving her one piriton twice a day and using elimination to work out what affects her most. We’ve kept her off grass, that has a huge affect. We’ve changed her to a grain free feed and only feed turkey and fish based feeds (chicken and red meat cause reactions in many dogs). We used non fleecy blankets and the vet said the fibres in red dyes often cause issues, so we avoid that colour too for blankets. We bath her in a sensitive skin shampoo every 10 days (found Sainsbury’s to be one of the best!) We use an equine product called Udder cream on her paws, belly and legs if we’re going to be on grass. It contains aloe, tea tree and other soothing non toxic things in a thick cream that acts as a barrier and seems to soothe really well too. We’ve managed quite well for five years like this, but this year something else is bothering her and she’s been itching her eye lately. So we may well end up going down the appoquel route. The previous vet was very anti appoquel for small dogs. Current vet isn’t! Feeling a bit torn.

It was chronic ear infections but when I then looked back, I could see that his poos had been a bit dodgy frequently but, because we switched meats so regularly, I had failed to see any patterns at the time.

Since then, I can see better 'tells' (perhaps because they are stronger now that he gets the foods less often or perhaps because I am looking for them). Poos, wind but also occasional feet nibbling. Never enough that I would have thought it a problem before, but now I see it as a sign that the meat we've just tried is a potential fail.

Our previous vet said not to bother with allergy tests as it would bring up lots of things, some of which would be minor.

This may be why our dermatologist had two lots of tests done at different labs and compared the results. Both came back clear, though.

It's been £££££! Glad we had lots of insurance, tbh.

My old dog had seasonal allergies. Manifested as ear irritations mostly.
We switched to low allergy foods and piriton over the summer.. mostly worked.

@OneFiveFour the itchy ears were fixed by grain free food and no chicken. Our previous vet said feed allergies often showed up with itchy ears.

@Honeyroar Makes sense! He was always on grain free so we already could rule that out.

Unfortunately, he had eaten almost every type of meat under the sun - so vegan was the safest next step for us.

Mental note to self: next puppy should only eat a few meats so that some of the weirder ones can be kept as a fall back!

How did you get on at the vets today?

Thanks for remembering! My husband took her because I was at work. I wrote down questions inspired by this thread for him to take! The vet sounds sure it is an allergy rather than a parastic infection. She took blood for testing and said when the results come back she will speak to us about next steps because that's when things can get complicated. I know that blood tests can bring up false positives but hopefully it will be some use. She said that a referral to a pet dermatologist (for skin testing) will take a while because of COVID so best to do this first. She agrees apoquel not a long term solution.

Reading this thread and thinking back to how the itching has manifested (she has had an ear infection too and does get runny poos from time to time) I'm beginning to think it might be dietary.

How do you know for sure it’s not fleas?

Flea allergic dogs can be bitten once and suffer a reaction for weeks despite there being no fleas on the dog!

My brother's lab had terrible allergies. He tried so many different things with mixed results. He switched to raw food and noticed a big improvement.