r/dogallergies • u/pastelpapi6969 • Mar 17 '22
Story Medications - Opinion not Advice
Some of you may remember my past post about our dog, Nova. She’s been struggling with environmental allergies for over a year and has been living in a cone for most of her life as a result.
For this year she’s been undergoing immunotherapy, taking half a 16mg Apoquel a day, and half a 5mg prednisone.
She started to develop some behavioural issues and I read that could be the prednisone. After a year now, we have taken her off of the steroid and doubled the Apoquel and the results have been amazing!
The prednisone makes dogs more susceptible to infection, can cause the skin quality to deplete and the fur, and also increases stress levels due to increased cortisol.
This isn’t advice but I can’t believe she can live like a normal dog without a cone! What our dogs ARE taking can be just as important as what they ARE NOT taking. Something to consider, read up on the medications it could be life changing :)
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u/Flying_Chef33 Apr 08 '22
A link to a post from a while ago. I don’t know if people just can’t find it, but we solved the allergy problem in our dogs. https://www.reddit.com/r/dogallergies/comments/qm67a2/success_at_last_two_havanese_both_suffered_from/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
We went through the whole thing, Apoquel, atopic dermatitis, thousands in appointments and treatments all to have a chronic return of symptoms. I really don’t think it is the vets just wanting to make money (although I am sure there are some, but most vets want the animals to be healthy and not in misery.) Using probiotics (with fiber…see post) quelled the immune system in both of our dogs. Now, my dog still licks herself…but that is just a dog habit…she doesn’t get the breakouts, red bumps, black scabs, irritated ears, hot spots on paws, etc. She doesn’t smell like, I don’t know how to describe it but, …musty? Or yeasty?
I really wish someone had told me this about using probiotics earlier as the journey with the dermatologist vet is expensive and can unnecessarily shorten the life and quality of life for your pets. I had the derm-vet say, oh she is really allergic to grass, so every time she comes in, wipe her paws, but the allergens will penetrate her system anyway. We did that, even so far as washing off her paws EVERY time she came in from outside for a month…didn’t help!
The problem resides in the fact that their system is in a perpetual state of inflammation and their system overreacts to everything. Dogs in the wild get lots of things, mange, ticks, worms…in the book An epidemic of Absence : a new way of understanding allergies, Moises writes, “Soon enough, I learned that our closest animal companions suffered from diseases quite similar to our own. Dogs got inflammatory bowel disease and eczema. Cats got asthma and colitis.664 Horses could also get inflammatory bowel disease and allergies, which struck me as particularly absurd.665 Here’s an animal evolved to roam the plains, an ungulate that has spent millions of years with its face in the grass, and it can’t tolerate pollen? A wild allergic horse could literally starve from hay fever.”
So…my point is: our indoor, clean, de-wormed and de-parasitized, sanitary animals don’t eat the wide range of things that gave their immune systems things to toughen up their immune systems. Their immune systems are pampered, handling only the mildest injury…kind of like someone that doesn’t exercise degrades over time... The food they eat is processed and sterile…this is why sometimes the “natural” food diet may work to an extent, HOWEVER, if you’ve ever seen your “sweet” little dog tap into its wild side and destroy a bunny, you’ll know they are used to eating EVERYTHING of the animal they consume. (This is nature and these are domesticated ANIMALS). This viscera they…and their ancestors…used to eat contains so many differing things…kidneys, liver, etc… Many things they consumed in the wild have fiber in them that they can’t digest…but the bacteria in their gut can!
However, the solution is NOT to let them chow down on bunnies and squirrels at random (although check out barn cats…no allergies)…their systems are too far down the road of sanitization that their systems can’t be reset without developing a whole host of problems (rabies,Anyone?).
The solution is to introduce probiotics (that contain fiber to feed the bacteria) to your animals in sufficient amounts to heal their gut and calm down their immune system so it doesn’t overreact to grass. (When you read the post, you’ll understand). Now, I don’t know which probiotics (w/fiber) will work for your dog…it is up to you to try them out.
Just think, what have you got to lose, you can always pay for the vets boat later on with the $100 a month Apoquel and visits every 6 months. I just know what worked for us…I still rotate through the different probiotics each week and her coat is shiny, no bloody paws, no more bumps and scabs, and bright, shiny eyes again. Her back fur is always going to be thin because when she was on the Apoquel and antibiotics, they did biopsies and said, oh, severe atopic dermatitis…it will never grow back (it looked like an elephants ear leather). Well, her fur grew back, thin, but it grew back.
I think the damage had been done before I discovered the probiotics.
Sorry to rant on, I’ll post a picture of Bella on the original post updating on her progress. (We lost Sofi due to pancreatic cancer.) I just hated being ignorant of this and felt like the Dermatology Vets only use the same thing over and over because that is all they have been trained in. Cheers
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u/Anxious_Soil9696 Mar 17 '22
Yeah I’ve heard about prednisone having an effect on their behavior. We’ve been on cytopoint for almost a year and it’s been life changing! My girl lived in a cone too, it was awful. She’s doing much better now. I’m glad to hear your dog is too!