Allergies and food

[KeeperBoy]

For those of you with allergy dogs...

When you've seen your dog itchy and decide to switch food, do you continue to medicate or do you drop the meds in an effort to figure out what's wrong. Keepers got some of Boo's turkey this weekend by mistake and his poor ears are bothering him again. We have old ear drops from the vet, but I'm tempted to just let it work itself out. Am I cruel?

[nikita&memo]

Memo just finished his ear drops about a wk ago, and that was the only time he's ever taken them. I'm not introducing another protein for another 2 mths...and if he starts itching again, i prob will get more drops (vet says he MUST take them if there is inflamation)...bc Memo is white, it looks pretty bad around his ears. Did Keepers also lose his hair on his ears previously..still waiting for Memo's to grow back LOL. What drops are you using? i was using synotic drops from the hol. vet.

[Spyglass Sally]

That's tough, Andrea. I know it's really a really hard position to be in - the hardest thing to do is nothing. In general, my position is to do nothing, at least as far as chemical medications, unless it's really necessary. But that's easier to say than do when it's not your dog. I ran across this (pasted below) and thought of you. Maybe it will be useful. I guess I'd probably try to avoid medication unless it was really bad. Maybe you could see Dr. Ditonto in Ada? I've been really impressed with her.

Jeffrey Levy, DVM - "The greatest harm of drug treatment is usually not so much the toxicity or side effects as it is the effects of suppression. Allopathic (conventional Western) medical thinking generally seeks immediate gratification: just make the symptom go away. So the patient may be better in the short term, but is usually worse in the longer term. Homeopathy is just the opposite: sometimes the symptoms are worse in the short term (such as with aggravation or the reversal of a previous suppression), but the real benefit is in the longer term. A symptom, say itchy skin, is the body's response to a deeper problem. When a symptom is suppressed, it is only the outward manifestation of the problem that goes away. Since the deeper problem is still there, the body may, in time, produce the same symptom again. Another possibility is that, as a result of the suppression, the deeper problem progresses to the point that a deeper, more serious symptom is produced. So the itchy skin may go away, but then chronic diarrhea develops. If the diarrhea is then suppressed as well, it may lead to, say, liver disease. But hey, at least the skin is cleared up! I see this pattern, or variations on it, very frequently in reviewing the medical records of new patients. It is the unrecognized, and often high, price that we pay for the quick fix, for immediate gratification, for the shot or pill that seems to make the problem go away."

[Ruby Red]

Originally Posted by KeeperBoy

For those of you with allergy dogs...

When you've seen your dog itchy and decide to switch food, do you continue to medicate or do you drop the meds in an effort to figure out what's wrong. Keepers got some of Boo's turkey this weekend by mistake and his poor ears are bothering him again. We have old ear drops from the vet, but I'm tempted to just let it work itself out. Am I cruel?

Andrea, first I would say, is be careful using ‘old drops’ please make sure they are within the use before period once the bottle is opened. Some medications [not all] start to grow bacteria and fungi in them when exposed to the air, other start to go ’off’ and change in their composition – a very few get stronger and some lose potency – I’m sure you know this but other people may be reading this and not be aware.

I’m not sure that this will ‘work itself out’ – in my experience with Jakey, once he starts bothering his ears he never lets up unless I deal with them in some way or other, however I must add that Jakey's condition is different from Keepers. Jakey’s ears constantly over produce wax that irritates him and makes his ears itchy. He then scratches his ears and they become infected. So we try to break this cycle by cleaning the ear every other day with 50 per cent apple cider vinegar diluted 50 per cent water. This doesn’t stop the ear overproducing wax, but in cleaning the ear and wax out regularly he has no reason to scratch his ears so this then prevents any infection setting in. Don’t know if that makes any sense? It’s a preventative approach and so far, fingers crossed we have been quite successful with it and kept him off vet meds [for his ears anyway] for almost a year!

I really hope Keepers ears settle down, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t. It is so hard to know what to do for the best, the times we have been through this very dilemma – weighing up how far to let Jakey ‘scratch and suffer’ as opposed to pumping him up with the steroids, that are just a quick fix. Maybe a visit to a homeopathic/holistic vet would at least give you some other options to explore?

Following my post on diet and allergies and all the fantastic advice I got on there, I finally found someone who seems to understand about Jakey and sells the products we need for him – e.g., natural steroids, [I just can’t get anything like this over here in UK –I spent hours searching and searching - we are so backwards here in some ways!]. Anyway, after much written correspondence, she has made several suggestions and recommendations for him and I am now waiting on delivery of some herbal and Chinese medicines. She seems really good - maybe if you e-mail her she could offer you some advice too?

This is her web site:

http://www.naturalrearing.com/coda/index.html#landing

She has written some really great articles on there if you have the time to read them.

I found this one that she wrote too - all about the use of steroids and antibiotics in pets and people:

http://devinefarm.net/rp/rpantis.htm
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[KeeperBoy]

Thanks for all the advice. I ended up giving him one dose of his ear drops because the poor dude was so sad. He only got the turkey for two meals on Saturday, so between the time and the drops he seems fine now. I also upped his ACV a bit, since that usually soothes his allergy issues.

I'm not sure if it is worth it for us to explore other options for him at this point. It seems easy enough to just avoid chicken and turkey. We've done some analysis of chinese feeding guild lines and because he is "hot and dry" we should avoid chicken and turkey for him anyways (his best foods according to that diet are pork and duck, which I found out worked for him before I met with expert on chinese diets). I guess allergies mean something is wrong, but if we avoid is triggers, isn't that solution enough?

On a side note, his grass eating has nearly stopped!