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Originally Posted by chestermama  does benadyrl help with the itchies, if it does help it is not food related, it will not help with food allergies. Chester is a itchy dog as well, no fabric softners, all free and clear soap, no air freshners or anything, and his salmon oil has helped for him. Good luck |
Whether Benadryl works is a crap shoot. Sometimes it does, sometimes no. It will be more likely to work w/ enviro / seasonal allergy response than w/ food allergies. Remember, food allergies only account for about 10% of dog allergies, so it's pretty rare.
The reason Benadryl and other antihistamines don't work w/ some food issues is bc *some* food intolerances have absolutely nothing to do with the immune system -
even though the symptoms are exactly like a histamine response. The reason why is bc there *are* foods that contain histamine and/or release histamine - so you have what appears to be an immune system mediated histamine response, when it's not....that's where Benadryl can't do anything. In those cases, you have to find a food that doesn't contain the ingreds that cause the food intolerance response.
Benadryl is a first line med. You try it for 10 days, evaluate. If it doesn't work, then you might move to Zyrtec or Claritin and try for 10 days. If those don't work, then - depending on the dog's quality of life - you think about prescrip meds like Atopic, Temaril P, steroids, or allergy testing + shots.
Here is a thread that better describes how to approach allergies:
http://www.yorkietalk.com/forums/die...tart-here.html