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Originally Posted by JennyLeroux  My 5 y.o. Yorkie always had seasonal allergies. I had her treated for the allergies. It was mild and they went away in during the cold weather. However, this year they got really bad. I couldn't bear to see her itching all the time and even through the night. I tried changing her food and it didn't work. It scared really bad when she lost a lot of hair on her hind legs and that was when I had enough. vet gave me a referral to The University of Tennessee Animal Hospital. I spent $300 for the app't, medications, and testing.
This was the results.
She had a bacteria infection on her skin. This is all we know so far.
Here is what I learned.
When it comes to allergies in dogs it is 1 of 3 things.
*** Flea
*** Food
*** Environmental
They said that the latter 2 are more time consuming and expensive. First, they wanted to rule out a flea allergy. For this they told me to Frontline her every three weeks and I give her Capstar every other day. If you do your own flea allergy test you could us Comfortis for this too. They also told me to treat my yard for the fleas. I had been Frontlining the dogs and they had still been getting fleas.
For medications they gave her something for the bacteria infection, a medicated shampoo, and a stronger anti-histamine. She is still itching but not near as bad. We just went this week. It is too soon to tell about the flea allergy. |
one flea bite can cause an allergy dog to flea saliva to itch up to 3 weeks. The flea meds kills the flea but does not keep them from biting the dog only kills the population. 90% of the time it is environmental. The things they are allergic to is PROTEINS - flea saliva is a protein, pollen is a protein and protein in food. Have you done an elimination diet for 12 weeks? My guess is if your dog stopped itching in the winter it is environmental as food is only 10% of the time. Also as dogs age if they have allergies you need to have a 6 panel thyroid done to rule out hypothyroid as that runs in this breed as well - has this been done? Thyroid and allergies are auto immune diseases tied to one another so definitely rule this out as well. I will send my link from another thread so you can check it out as i have been dealing with this and very passionate about it for 5 years and buy dermatology books etc for dogs and we go to a dermatologist, dr jean dodds and holistic as well as regular vets and internal medicine