Oscar's allergy problems - treatment ideas?

Hi,

We got the results of Oscar's allergy tests today and he is allergic to house dust mites and stowage mites (?) (vet said they are found in dry food).

She is going to speak to his dermatologist tomorrow and see what he thinks we should do next, but as far as I know the options are to keep him on prednisolone and treat any skin/ear infections as they occur, try hyposensitisation vaccines to see if he can be desensitised or put him onto atopica.

I was wondering if anyone had any experience with dogs with these allergies and what might be our best course of action (obviously we will listen to the advice of his vets). He is definitely not allergic to anything outside, which is good.

Thanks

Ali

Finn is allergic to storage mites I find that keeping his food in airtight containers helps him. Ideally its better to buy the smaller bags but with a big dog it is not really cost effective. I usually buy the 15kg bag and transfer it into 2 containers and keep one sealed until the first is empty.

In between bags of food the containers are steam cleaned and left to dry. Also keeping the face clean after feeding to remove crumbs.

The lab that did the allergy testing for Finn has got some good information on their website which I will have a look for

There is some info on mites in the link below

http://www.axiomvetlab.com/allergyve...20brochure.pdf

Milo was allergic to these too. I got a steam cleaner and reguarly steam cleaned the house to cut down on the house dust mites. I also took him off dried food and fed nature diet to eliminate the storage mites.
You say he is definitely not allergic to anything outside. Please be aware they cannot test for everything, so there may be other things he is allergic to that was not in the test.
Milos results came back that he was not allergic to grasses, clovers etc but yet he was a lot worse in the summer months, so the vet said he was probably allergic to some grasses and pollens that were not included in the test.
Because of the side effects and long term problems of prednisilone I would advise trying Atopica, it is very good. Unfortunatly Milo couldn't tolerate it with his IBD, but it can work wonders.

IBD as in Inflammatory Bowel Disease? If so this could be a problem as they are reasonably sure Oscar has this too. What did you do to treat Milo for his allergies?

We are waiting to talk to the vet once she's spoken to the dermatologist and we will then see what they are suggesting. I think we'll also talk to her about whether to change to wet food.

I just want to do what I can to help him. I know once we own our own house we can do a lot to minimise dust mites that we can't do in rented accomodation and we are happy to live with laminate floors, no curtains, leather/fake leather sofas and anti-allergy covers for duvets etc (all things advised by the dermatologist if house dust mites were an issue). I just want to keep him as healthy and comfy as possible.

Have you thought about a switching Oscar to a raw diet?

I can provide more information if needed (off to let the pups out to potty) when I return.

I don't know whether anybody can confirm this, but I suspect that the mites are killed by freezing. That being so, you could improve your storage of dried food by splitting your bag as recommended, then freezing the batches prior to sealing up. If you kill off any existing mites, they can't reproduce in the sealed container. Same for soft bedding: periodically freeze it to kill off any mites that have got past washing/vacuuming.

Kind of relies on you having a decent sized freezer, and the family being tolerant of finding dog toys and beds in there

Hi,
You need to get an endoscopy done and have some biopsies taken to confirm or rule out IBD properly so you know if your dealing with that or just allergies.
Milos allergies were helped immensely by use of a steam cleaner round the house reguarly and by changing to wet food to illiminate the storage mites completely. However there was the seasonal allergy too but despite testing for many things we couldn't pinpoint what it was that was causing it.
If IBD is confirmed you need to change the food to one protein source that Oscar hasn't had before to see if he can tolerate that and feed only that. It means strictly no treats or anything else.
Atopica is a good treatment but if that doesn't work there are other treatments you can try.
Sadly for Milo even though he was under a top european specialist in internal medicene it was found that he was allergic to all food stuffs and after a long battle we lost him.
Most dogs can be got succesfully under control with it though with the correct treatment and diet.

Raw diet is not reccomended for IBD dogs as they can't have the variety to give them a balanced diet.