Anyone had a dog with skin allergies?

[hellcatspangle]

I may have the chance to rehome a dog with atopic dermatitis. However, it isn't really clear how much management this will require - it's been suggested medicated baths will be required but I don't know how often....has anyone had a dog with this and was it manageable or a total PITA?

Not current dog, but previous one. It was high maintenance but to be honest the worst thing was the dogs discomfort.
When it flared, it was miserable for him; lots of itchy areas, licking constantly, hard to sleep.
We managed it as best we could with bathing, food, and antihistamines, but sometimes it was very sad to see.

My old dog had skin allergies (to pretty much everything - we had him tested) and we tried everything. He would itch til his fur fell out. His whole torso was bare, we had to put a jumper on him to stop the scratching. I struggled to get it under control and even though the rehoming centre told us they were treating him for bald patches when we got him it ended up not being covered by insurance as a pre existing condition and the dog centre wouldn't help towards cost

Hm. Sounds like it can be pretty tough going then. I'm happy to consider it if it's not a huge issue but I'd hate to be watching a dog suffer on a daily basis.

I had one for 6 years, I ended up euthanising him. His allergies meant that he never had a solid poo despite being on a special diet. He’d have flare ups which left him with bald patches. He’d occasionally get secondary skin infections from scratching. The worst thing though was his ears. The skin inside is affected the same as the outside and obviously it’s much harder to treat. He had almost constant ear infections, we practically lived at the vets over those. He suffered every day of his life

You’ll have to be prepared for the smell as well. Dogs with bad skin absolutely reek

Our dog is allergic to something inside - we got the tests done and it's some kind of housemite or dustmite or something we cannot eradicate from the home. It doesn't sound half as bad as some of the cases on here, but she licks her paws A LOT which I find really difficult to listen to, and we have her on an immunotherapy course where she has a monthly injection of a vaccine they developed for her based on her bloods. We see an immediate improvement in the licking straight after the injection, and then she starts getting worse with it again as it gets to the end of the 4 weeks.

We don't know how long she'll be on these injections, it's supposed to get to a stage where she doesn't need them anymore but I'm not sure, it's been nearly a year now and she's still licking all the time.