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Originally Posted by Patti  Welcome! Poor baby. My Cali who will be 5 soon has bad allergies but not near as bad as your little girl. I did all the testing, food and environmental and it came back she was not allergic to anything they tested for. The vet said the problem with environmental is that they can't test for everything out there. After trying the usual meds and steroids short term the vet put her on Atopica. Cali has mild MVD and a very sensitive tummy so we had to put her on a low dose of steroids for 2 weeks when we first put her on the Atopica because she kept throwing up. After 2 weeks on the low dose steroid and the Atopica she has been great. The vet had hoped to get her to taking it once or twice a week but if she even misses one day she starts itching some. So I have to keep her on the daily atopica. It costs 60.00 a month for her weight, 5.5 lbs. But it was such a relief to see her stop scratching. She has been on it for about 2 years now. I do worry about long term use but her quality of life is so much better now. Please keep us posted on how she is doing. |
that is great
but what allergy lab did they do the testing at as i did two with two labs which my derm does not like
but it was 5 years ago i had them done $400 each by vets so should have had derm do them as the labs she recommends are pretty accurate and on the allerdog group i am on many have had success with VARL lab and that is who our dermatologist uses but of course i will have to pay another $400 to get another allergy test done. the vets used biomedical and full spectrum labs and both showed dd was very highly allergic to alot of things one being sycamore and we live by sycamore canyone
The derm does not like to do skin testing in toy breeds as she has to shave both sides of them and it is really hard on the dog to put that much in their small body to see reactions and they have to be off steroids for 6 weeks and that would be torture for my dd - they can do skin testing on dogs that are on atopica as i think and i could be wrong and have to ask our derm the reason is because steroids keep inflammation down in body and why the dog may not react to what they are injecting into the skin as what they are looking for in injecting things into skin is the skin getting red and inflamed and how they know if they are allergic to it and the steroids may prevent that where as atopica does not have an anti-inflammatory agent in it i do believe so does not affect the skin testing
Food allergy cannot be determined by blood testing and they do not skin test for that either so the only way to test that is by elimination diet and it is only in 10% of dogs anyway 90% of the time it is environmental which is the hardest to treat so you are left with hyposensitization which is safest but some dogs get worse which is why i never did it but derm said if she does then we stop, and atopica which in some dogs makes them vomit and did with mine even tried with little food, and steroids.