Itchy Dog ? Feet chewing? Feet Licking? Ear Scratching? Face Rubbing?
Skin and ear problems cause suffering and pain in more than fifty percent of our dogs. Skin and ear infections are amazing common. Allergies are usually the predisposing problem that result in these infections. Don’t you simply hate the word allergies. Sounds like something that should be easy to resolve without causing all the pain and suffering that allergies cause. Antihistamines help many people with allergies except in severe cases. Unfortunately, except in a few mild cases antihistamines do not work in the dog. Over the years the drug that has been used regularly is some type of steroid. The intial response to steroids appears excellent but as time progresses more frequent and higher doses are needed to treat the symptoms. The side effects are many such as excessive urination, excessive appetite, excessive drinking, increase number of infections to just ename a few. Steroids was the only drug we had available to help these patients but the price our dogs paid for relief was high.
Three years ago Zoetis release a medication known as Apoquel for the management of allergies Apoquel has been avaialble in very limited quanties. Due the limited quanity available we have selectively used Apoquel on the most severe patients. The result have been excellent. Our most severe patients have seen a level of relief they have not seen for years. Apoquel has viritally no side effects. Apoquel is the biggest break through in the treatment of allergies in the dog in over fifty years. The frustration up this point is limited quanity of Apoquel that has been available. The exciting news is that we now have Apoquel available for all our patients not simply the most severe cases
