Scratching Face - Allergies - Help!

LittleLucyGoose · Mar 19, 2016

Hi all!

Lucy, our 2 year old frenchie, has horrible allergies. Recently she's started to itch her face around eye area excessively and we've had to use the cone of shame to stop her from bleeding.

The vet gave her a cortisone shot, but we haven't seen much improvement. Prior to that we were giving her benedryl. I also gave her a bath this week with cortisoothe shampoo (shampoo from vet with cortisone). We're currently feeding her Great Life buffalo which is grain free, potato free. The vet told us to wait a few weeks to try generic zyrtec. We are also putting an ointment on her eye area called Vetropolycin to help prevent infections.

She's so itchy still and we don't know what to do! Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Jakeyjake · Mar 19, 2016

Poor Lucy. Both of my dogs have allergies so I completely understand. Some dogs respond to different antihistamines so you could try the Zyrtec or Claritin. Neither worked for mine. We had them allergy tested and discovered Jake had pretty bad environmental allergies so we gave him allergy shots for about 1 1/2 years with little improvement. So he is on Apoquel now. It has really helped him. Stella's allergies started at a very young age and were quite severe with secondary infections, so she is on cyclosporine. We give her the lowest dose we can because it causes stomach upset. She still has to wear a shirt because she scratches her rib cage but not nearly as bad. You could also try a limited ingredient food to see if that helps. Maybe she has developed an allergy to something in her kibble. We did the Nutriscan test on Jake and he has food intolerances to Pork, Peanuts, Potato and Corn. Every dog is different though. A lot of people find their dogs do better on a raw diet that have allergies. A good fish oil may help too. Weekly baths are a must in our house as well. We also wipe them down when coming in from a walk. We use Duoxo. Good luck and I hope you can find her some relief soon

davidh · Mar 20, 2016

JLO was allergies and we give her Temaril-P and it works for her.

2bullymama · Mar 21, 2016

Have to talked to your vet about doing a full blood screen allergy test? It will give you a better idea of the cause and help you treat or avoid the allergen? It could be environmental, but it cause also be something you are feeding her outside of the kibble

LittleLucyGoose · Jul 20, 2016

UPDATE: We did the allergy test and $500 later, we didn't really have much to work with... the allergy levels seemed low for everything... in terms of food, I think she had a mild allergy to corn pollen, but it was really low on the scale. Our vet of course suggested more tests- skin scrape, thyroid panel
and fungal bacterial culture...which altogether would cost a lot. This would all be to rule out whether she's atrophic or has another issue. We have a cortisone shampoo, we've been giving her benedryl 1x a time and it's been really bad still. The vet gave her a cortisone shot that helped, but it was temporary and only lasted a month and a half. Our baby is so itchy that she has to wear a cone or she cuts up her face. Any other suggestions are welcome. This is so incredibly frustrating!

Cbrugs · Jul 21, 2016

Is her face yeasty at all? Jax sometimes gets yeasty in his face folds and he has actually been scratching and rubbing his face on the carpet a lot recently. Sometimes his face will smell like fritos. When this happens I will clean his face folds with a medicated wipe every day and that usually clears it up.

Jakeyjake · Jul 21, 2016

If it's not allergies, then I would recommend getting a skin scraping done to determine if it is a bacterial infection that may respond to antibiotics or as [MENTION=188]Cbrugs[/MENTION] said perhaps it's a yeast overgrowth. Here is a link to a video from Dr. Karen Becker about yeast. Ihttp://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/2011/05/03/eating-these-foods-can-make-your-dog-itch-like-crazy.aspxs
Good luck!

Lauriecali · Jul 21, 2016

Oh poor Lucy, my boy also has allergies. Cam is 4 and we have spent a lot of money. He has gotten horrible ear infections from his allergies. Be very careful what medications you give her. I have tried Vetalog injections, apoquel and Atopica. I just had to finally stop and clean out his poor body from all these toxins. No more Vacinnes do titer blood testing, keep Lucy clean with once a week baths. When she comes in from outside wipe her down. Give her coconut oil in her food, vitamin C, probiotics, omega fish oils. You can even rub dermapaw on her itchy face. The allergy blood test only really show environmental you may need to do two from different companies and compare results. If you find she does have environmental allergies the immune therapy takes up to a year for her body to see results. Then there's food, that's up to you to do. Lucy needs to eat clean limited ingredients and see if you notice any change. I hope her itches don't spread to any other areas. Hope this helps. Just remember do not put her on any meds until you research them, you don't want to hurt her kidney or liver.

2bullymama · Jul 22, 2016

LittleLucyGoose said:
UPDATE: We did the allergy test and $500 later, we didn't really have much to work with... the allergy levels seemed low for everything... in terms of food, I think she had a mild allergy to corn pollen, but it was really low on the scale. Our vet of course suggested more tests- skin scrape, thyroid panel
and fungal bacterial culture...which altogether would cost a lot. This would all be to rule out whether she's atrophic or has another issue. We have a cortisone shampoo, we've been giving her benedryl 1x a time and it's been really bad still. The vet gave her a cortisone shot that helped, but it was temporary and only lasted a month and a half. Our baby is so itchy that she has to wear a cone or she cuts up her face. Any other suggestions are welcome. This is so incredibly frustrating!

When the allergy test was done... was she on any medications (steroids esp. need to be out of the system for 30 days or you will get false negative results.