Allergy Dog

It’s one thing to have a dog. It’s another to have one with allergies to most foods and the environment.

Our dog has chronic yeast infections due to her allergies, and with such looks like crap most of the time. However, since working at a veterinary clinic does have the advantage of reduced services and products, we decided it was time to see if we could finally get this thing under control… without the massive costs associated with treatment. Yes, we’ve seen a specialist and tried her remedies, but unfortunately they were not only quite cost prohibitive but we didn’t see any results for the year we were seeing her and giving our dog injections. So now we are back to our tried and true method of attacking this yeast infection from the inside and the outside with a powerful drug, Ketoconazole, MalAcetic shampoo and Otomax for her ears. Okay, so this is a new method except for the Keto, but still, drugs, shampoo and ear stuff. We used Malaseb shampoo before but the company went out of business and a Ketoconazole flush for her ears, but the MalAcetic shampoo and Otomax are working better and faster than either of the other two.

I really wish I would’ve taken a before picture of our Lucy before we started treatment, a week after beginning treatment when she looked absolutely awful and had torn herself apart so badly and was oozing greasy film out of her ears and armpits, and one today where she finally looks like she is healing. Okay, so maybe the oozy picture with puffy eyes she couldn’t even open wouldn’t have been the best look for her, but still, it’d have been nice to compare.

Hopefully when everything is back in order we can simply have her back on daily allergy pills like Claritin or Zyrtec or Benadryl (okay, their generic counterparts from Costco) and only have to go through a round of Ketoconazole every few months just to prevent this from coming back as badly as it did this last time. Of course, with us moving, I wonder how many of her allergies will stop flaring up once we are in a newer house that hopefully doesn’t have mold and mildew and random dust mites from sixty years.

In case you are curious what she is allergic to, let me gather her testing chart. And by no means since we didn’t have luck with an allergist should you not consult one if your pet has allergies. Our dog just has so many of them that it would be nearly impossible to treat and notice a difference, but knowing what she has allergies to helps. Anyway, here’s the list: Kentucky Blue grass, June grass, Sweet Vernal, ragweed, poverty weed, nettle, lambs quarter, firebush, elm trees, alder trees, aspergillus fumigatus (mold), fusarium (molds), penicillium notatum (mold), D. farinae (house dust mite), D. pteronyssinus (house dust mite), cat epithelia, malassezia, and then just for the hell of it, mixed grasses. In a nutshell she is allergic to the indoors and the outdoors. Food-wise, her allergies are mainly grains, which was plainfully (yes, I’m aware I conjugated two words that shouldn’t be, but it works here for what I’m trying to convey, so keep your petty grammatical correctness to yourself as I commonly make words up in order to serve my own purposes) obvious since she’s allergic to nearly every grass. For good measure we also eliminated lamb and chicken, the main protein sources in the foods she was eating prior to having her tested, although I doubt she has an allergy to either of those. Hard to say without further testing.

I just can’t wait to be able to pet her again, especially her ears, without running my hands over various scabs from her scratching. I also can’t wait to not have to smell that ass-nasty smell yeast emits and seems to permeate everything it comes into contact with. Seriously, it’s disgusting.