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!

@Swimminginroses I guess I don't know for absolute 100% sure. But she gets regular flea treatments, doesn't have any bites I can find, she's a short haired dog which makes it easy to check for critters or casings/droppings - none in evidence.

It's been so helpful to post on here, especially to get a sense of the things I should be looking out for, but I don't want to be second guessing the vet all the time. She's examined our dog, heard the history, and has suggested a course of action. I'm going to try to trust the process and be thankful I paid £££ for decent insurance.

Just posting for the benefit of other readers but I would say that if a vet prescribes Apoquel but does not also prescribe a vet strength flea tick mite treatment such as Advocate or Bravecto at the same time, to ensure eradication and prevention of fleas mites and ticks, then that is not good practice, as the Apoquel will mask the signs of these serious conditions.

In the thread linked below a poster refers to the fact that their dog died of Mange as Apoquel masked the symptoms. We were planning to euthanise our dog tomorrow, on the 31st September, if we could not resolve the condition, out of concern for the dogs quality of life ,- the 5th vet, after 4 months of misery, diagnosed mange and treated it. The dog improved dramatically within 24 hours - but we kept the apoquel going for a few weeks as Mange has to grow out of the skin.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/the_doghouse/2642409-has-anybody-heard-of-or-used-apoquel-for-their-dogs

Thanks @ruthieness. Advocate is the flea treatment we use. Just to recap though, she's been gradually itchier over I would say the past three or four months (during which time we first gave Advocate, looked into Omega 3s to reduce inflammation, switched shampoos etc) but has only been on Apoquel for two weeks. I'm not going to forget what you said about keeping an eye out for other symptoms.

You and your dog have been through a lot, and I'm so glad he is OK now after you got the right advice.

Actually it's not Advocate - it's Advantage, which I don't think is as strong because we bought it ourselves without a prescription.

Sorry for the multiple posts - but in the thread you link to, the poster you refer to mentions steroids, rather than Apoquel, as potentially being linked to the death of their German Shepherd. Our dog is not going to be on Apoquel long term - on the vet's advice we are titrating the dose down to half a tablet a day and then no tablets by her next appointment next week. I said in my first post I don't want her to be on Apoquel long term. I want to find out what's causing the itching, I don't want to just treat the itch.

I guess from these three early morning posts you can tell I do feel defensive about the implication that I am just letting my dog suffer without bothering to find out what's going on. I am doing everything I can to find out what's going on - I'm researching parasites, environmental allergies, food allergies, looking at various dietary and skin care regimens, asking people for their experiences online, but i have to follow some kind of process or I'm just going to be chasing my tail.

Our dog was allergic to beef and wheat. The improvement when we changed her diet was so dramatic, she was so much happier and healthier. We had to get a special food for her, as wheat is often used as a filler, and does not need to be listed on ingredients of pet food where we are.

You are right - that post does mention Steroids as the cause of the dogs death - not Apoquel - like you. too much night time reading!! As you can imagine I have become a bit obsessed! It is ridiculous how much we love our dogs but we do.

You are definitely doing all the right things for your beloved beast!