Our Experience With Allergies

Our Experience With Allergies

2020 was a tough year for Josie and Edie’s health. Both girls at differing points of the year have struggled with allergies and Edie continues to struggle now and it’s been tough for us all. The world of dog allergies is so unbelievably complicated and whilst I’m no expert I thought it might be good to share our story and what our experience has been like. I know that when we first started dealing with this it felt incredibly lonely and it still does when you’re trying to do anything you can for your dog and they’re still poorly so this is our story and experience. Of course, like with all of these posts, I am not a vet or have any health qualifications so this is certainly not a guide of things that you should be doing but just what has and hasn’t worked for us.

JOSIE

During the first lockdown in the UK (March/April) I started noticing a pattern with Josie and every few days she would stop eating her meals and she was frantically eating grass. Now, Josie does like to graze on the long stringy grass but you know if when you have a dog there is a big difference between them wanting to eat grass and them needing to eat grass so they can be sick. At first, I thought it might be something she was picking up on walks, or possibly it was from drinking out of the stream as the weather was unseasonably warm. Even after keeping her on the lead for weeks, the same thing kept on happening. She was getting more and more unwell as the weeks went on, and normally we would have taken her to the vets a lot sooner than we did but as we were in the midst of a global pandemic so getting a vets appointment was difficult.

When we finally did see our fantastic vet, she diagnosed Josie with a stomach ulcer and prescribed some antibiotics and a stomach acid blocker. It was at this time that we started to keep a detailed food diary as our vet advised us to do this alongside an elimination diet. The antibiotics and acid blockers didn’t do anything and at this point, she was refusing meals daily and vomiting so she was losing weight. Josie doesn’t carry any extra weight at all so it was becoming an even bigger worry than before. We also noticed her coat was in pretty bad condition and she’d started losing fur around her sides as well. As we’d been keeping a detailed food diary and working our way through an elimination diet she was only eating minimal proteins so that's when we started looking at her treats. This is where we eventually found the culprit, some venison sausages that weren’t 100% venison, they included pork and as soon as we removed these treats from her diet she improved overnight. Ever since July, we’ve not had any issues with Josie’s wellbeing and she’s healthier than ever.

a food diary & elimination diet

Without a doubt, the best thing that I did was keeping a food diary for Josie as well as going through the process of elimination with food. She is fed a complete raw diet which made this process a hundred times easier to only feed her one type of meat for 2 weeks before we then added another protein back in and now we’re feeding her a full range of proteins once again which is important when feeding a raw diet. Our food diary looked like the following;

• The amount of food she was eating, when and what protein it was.

• Where she was walked and if she was off lead or not.

• What treats she was eating if she was fed any.

• What her poops was like, if she was eating any grass and if she was sick that day.

• Her general health that day.

By keeping such a detailed diary we could pinpoint when we added proteins back into her diet and when she started to become unwell again which helps us figure out what it was. The final thing that we did to help her recover from being unwell for so long was feeding her little and often. She’s usually fed in the morning and evening but we added in two extra meals. Not only did this seem to help her eat more but it sparked her interest in food once again as the portions weren’t so overwhelming.

Edie

symptoms

Just after we got Josie back on the road to recovery in August I started to notice Edie scratching herself a lot more than usual and it gradually got so bad she was breaking the skin and itching until she bled. I took her to the vets a couple of weeks after the first time she broke the skin and got given a few days of steroids but the vets were pretty clueless to what it could be. And I was certainly none the wiser as she didn’t have fleas and the only thing we knew she had difficulty with is chicken which we don’t feed either dog. As we walk next to a lot of farmer's fields the suggestion of harvest mites got thrown up and it did make with some of her symptoms but not all. I purchased a shampoo and a spray that would help if that was the culprit and when she was freshly bathed she did get a few days relief but she would start itching like crazy once again.

diagnosis

At the beginning of November, I took her to the vets again as we weren’t managing very well. With regular baths and keeping her skin covered it was somewhat ok but ultimately we weren’t getting to the root of the issue which was worrying. We’d gone back and forth thinking we’d finally worked out the cause when we hadn't, honestly, I don’t think there was anything we hadn’t examined in our lives and we were still drawing a blank. The vet prescribed a drug called Apoquel, I’m sure if you have an itchy dog you will have heard of this as it’s considered a miracle drug. However, this tablet has a lot of side effects, some extremely concerning ones and even though it was great at stopping the initial itch it still was not helping us get any further at why she was so itchy and why it had suddenly started happening out of nowhere. After another trip to the vets, I decided that I didn't want her to be kept on Apoquel any longer. They prescribed a few weeks of steroids that did the same job at keeping her itch free but they did give her some side effects like increased hunger and her fur was thinning badly. We decided at that appointment that it was vital that we got to the bottom of what was causing her to be so itchy and unhappy. She was booked in for a blood test so her blood could be sent away and tested for allergens and finally her results came back with allergies to:

• grass variants

• dust mites

• wheat

As well as discovering what her allergies were we also asked the vet to examine and empty her anal glands and they were very full. Now blocked anal glands were not the root cause of her obsessive itching but they can cause allergies to become more severe so them not emptying by themselves certainly weren’t helping matters. 

treatment

Our vet decided the best course of action for Edie’s allergies is an immunotherapy injection that she will receive monthly. However, this injection took over a month to be produced and arrive at our vets, and in the meantime, she was treated with steroids again and there were some changes we made as well. We took her off her raw diet and I’m unsure if we will put her back on that type of diet right now. Whilst she’s not allergic to any proteins directly she is allergic to wheat and a severe wheat allergy can be triggered from what the livestock is fed which is maybe why she showed such a sensitivity to chicken and all poultry as a puppy. We have switched her to a diet of fish only for the foreseeable future and she has thrived on that. At first, she struggled a lot being on kibble so we put her on Forthglade wet dog food and it suits her so well, she enjoys her meals and we’ve seen a big difference in her coat as well as her bowel movements. As well as changing her diet there were some changes we made around our home, as she showed an allergy to dust mites I bought this spray off Amazon and sprayed it on every single soft furnishing in our home as well as our carpet and rugs. Anything that could be washed was washed at 90 degrees was and I bought a special hypoallergenic quilt for our bed as she does sleep with us at night. The only thing that we can't manage on our own is her grass allergy so we wash her paws when she’s encountered a lot of grass. Sadly grass is completely unavoidable which is why the injection is so important for her long-term wellbeing. As of right now when I’m writing this post, Edie has had one dose of her injection and so far she is ok. She is still itching slightly but nothing in comparison to what she was. She has another dose soon and I’m hoping we will see more of a difference as well as all the steps we’re doing at home I truly hope 2021 is a kinder year to her as she’s still not quite right but she is certainly better than she was.

cost

When it comes to treating and diagnosing allergies there is certainly nothing cheap about it so I thought it might be good to include how much this process has cost so far:

• Vet appointments & steroid treatment £200

• Allergy blood test £600

• 6 months worth of immunotherapy injection £450

Of course, this doesn’t include the amount I’ve spent outside the vets on more natural treatment options, changes of food, supplements, and new duvets, etc. Our insurance has thankfully covered all of our vet treatment (apart from our excess) and I’m beyond grateful that we have it and it was able to be covered as it’s undeniably been a stressful time for us all.