Greetings all!
I'm finally joining a forum to see if anyone has any insights that might help me help my 6 year old pit mix with very severe allergies.
I got Dolores at the ASPCA a year and a half ago. They warned me she had allergies, but said it would a sort of out-break and resolve once a year type of situation. Unfortunately, Dolores had a severe outbreak the very first weekend I got her. I took her immediately to the animal hospital, and they treated her with a shot of antibiotics and told me to change her already prescription diet to a different protein.
So, I put her on a venison diet (instead of duck) and began washing her with the special allergy shampoo more often. Immediately after the antibiotics wore off, her skin started showing signs of infection again. So I took her to the vet. They gave more antibiotics. She got better. As soon as the antibiotics were finished, she got worse again. So, I took her to a dermatologist. She went through a series of testing and we ended up where we started, that she had bad allergies, likely a variety of environmental ones. So, they tried another dose of antibiotics and also gave her the anti-itch CADI injection. Again, it helped for a couple weeks. Her itch level was okay as long as she was on the CADI inject, but her skin was always bad. Then the CADI stopped working too, so we tried every single anti-itch over the course of about 6 months. I'll spare you recapping all of the visits, but I have been going almost monthly to the dermatologist ($$$$$!!!!!) and have tried many forms of antibiotics, including testing for the exact type of bacteria and seeing what antibiotics she isn't resistant to and targeting it. Some of them have been dangerous and many have side effects. While we've finally reduced the itching by having her on both atopica and the CADI injections, the infections won't go away. The antibiotics seem to slow them down, but never resolve the problem. She's always bare and incredibly dry, coarse, flaky, and smelly on her chest, legs, tail, and head.
We've run out of options and she cannot keep taking antibiotics to ebb the infections. The dermatologist told me as a last resort, to soak her skin in bleach daily and rinse her. I was hesitant to do so, but am desperate to help her out, so I started doing it. It's been a few weeks, but I haven't noticed any improvement.
I have more than depleted my funds over the course of the year (to such a degree that I took out a loan) with expensive visits, tests, and blood monitoring, so suggestions of additional exploratory tests aren't really feasible. We considered trying to get her on immunotherapy, but because it takes up to a year to kick in and is hard to get right if the skin is infected during testing, the dermatologist didn't feel it was the right approach.
She'll officially be off of antibiotics in another week, and then she'll get worse fast, so I wanted to see if anyone had any insights or creative solutions.
Thanks!!!
I'm finally joining a forum to see if anyone has any insights that might help me help my 6 year old pit mix with very severe allergies.
I got Dolores at the ASPCA a year and a half ago. They warned me she had allergies, but said it would a sort of out-break and resolve once a year type of situation. Unfortunately, Dolores had a severe outbreak the very first weekend I got her. I took her immediately to the animal hospital, and they treated her with a shot of antibiotics and told me to change her already prescription diet to a different protein.
So, I put her on a venison diet (instead of duck) and began washing her with the special allergy shampoo more often. Immediately after the antibiotics wore off, her skin started showing signs of infection again. So I took her to the vet. They gave more antibiotics. She got better. As soon as the antibiotics were finished, she got worse again. So, I took her to a dermatologist. She went through a series of testing and we ended up where we started, that she had bad allergies, likely a variety of environmental ones. So, they tried another dose of antibiotics and also gave her the anti-itch CADI injection. Again, it helped for a couple weeks. Her itch level was okay as long as she was on the CADI inject, but her skin was always bad. Then the CADI stopped working too, so we tried every single anti-itch over the course of about 6 months. I'll spare you recapping all of the visits, but I have been going almost monthly to the dermatologist ($$$$$!!!!!) and have tried many forms of antibiotics, including testing for the exact type of bacteria and seeing what antibiotics she isn't resistant to and targeting it. Some of them have been dangerous and many have side effects. While we've finally reduced the itching by having her on both atopica and the CADI injections, the infections won't go away. The antibiotics seem to slow them down, but never resolve the problem. She's always bare and incredibly dry, coarse, flaky, and smelly on her chest, legs, tail, and head.
We've run out of options and she cannot keep taking antibiotics to ebb the infections. The dermatologist told me as a last resort, to soak her skin in bleach daily and rinse her. I was hesitant to do so, but am desperate to help her out, so I started doing it. It's been a few weeks, but I haven't noticed any improvement.
I have more than depleted my funds over the course of the year (to such a degree that I took out a loan) with expensive visits, tests, and blood monitoring, so suggestions of additional exploratory tests aren't really feasible. We considered trying to get her on immunotherapy, but because it takes up to a year to kick in and is hard to get right if the skin is infected during testing, the dermatologist didn't feel it was the right approach.
She'll officially be off of antibiotics in another week, and then she'll get worse fast, so I wanted to see if anyone had any insights or creative solutions.
Thanks!!!