Pet Allergies and Treatment Options

It's Late Spring and Early Summer

It’s Allergy Season for Pets, too…

Watery eyes, sneezing, stuffy nose and itchy rashes are just a few symptoms that can drive people crazy during allergy season, but pets can be allergy sufferers as well. The most common signs of allergies in dogs and cats are itchy skin and ears. Excessive scratching, chewing or biting are indications that your pet may be afflicted with allergies.

Pets showing signs of allergies should visit a veterinarian. It’s common that allergies are related to the environment, this is referred to as atopy and involves a complex immunologic reaction.

Environmental allergies are a seasonal or non-seasonal sensitivity to tree pollen, weeds, grasses, house dust mites and mold spores. Dogs and cats inhale these allergens or absorb them through the skin.

Symptoms include increased scratching, rubbing, licking and chewing, especially of the feet, face, ears and flanks, and inflammation of the skin. Dogs also “scoot” to relieve itching in the anal area.

To help pets with environmental allergies, keep pets indoors during dusk and dawn, the heaviest pollination times. Avoid walking through fields. Rinse the pets’ feet with cool water after running through grassy or weedy sites. Keep lawns cut short. Bathe pets frequently with medicated shampoos available through your veterinarian.

Clean and vacuum often and remove old carpets or mats where dust mites gather. Regularly wash and thoroughly dry pets’ bedding. Minimize a pet’s exposure to mold by avoiding rooms with high moisture levels such as bathrooms and basements.

When these first preventive measures do not help, pets should be seen by their veterinarian and should be thoroughly worked up. But what, exactly, does that mean?

For starters, it means we rule out other potential causes of skin disease to make sure we’re not over emphasizing the allergy component. This might include skin scrapes to look for skin mites, ear swabbing and skin scraping for microscopic evaluation, cultures and blood testing.

There are several diseases, such as Cushings Disease or Hypothyroidism, which can show up as skin or hair coat abnormalities. For some types of lesions, skin biopsies may be in order. 

Allergies can be food related as well. Food allergies are very common in pets.  A food diet trial with a prescription hypoallergenic food is the best diagnostic method to rule out food allergies.  It is good to remember that even pets without food allergies can benefit greatly from a skin support diet as it will promote a stronger skin barrier. 

Testing for environmental allergens can be done in pets just as it is with people. This can be done either by sending a blood sample into a lab or through intradermal skin testing.  Intradermal skin testing should be done by a dermatologist.

For skin testing, the veterinary dermatologist will clip the fur, inject a small amount of each of up to 50 allergens into the skin and record the size of the swelling (indicating the immune response).

With either testing method, once the allergens have been determined an appropriate immunotherapy can be initiated.  Your pet will get allergy shots just like people do.  After the initial treatment period pets usually receive maintenance injections at 14 to 28 day intervals.  Allergy shots may sound like a lot of work, but they’re really not. Subcutaneous injections are easy in pets. We can teach you how to give them. And we’re always happy to do them for you if you’re willing to come in on a regular basis.

The best part about an allergy vaccine protocol is that no drugs are administered (though many pets may need drugs to remain comfortable until the vaccines kick in). These are natural substances that work because the gradually increased levels of allergens in the shots are helping the body’s immune system become acclimated to them––instead of producing the aberrant immune response responsible for the allergies.

Some clients think it a bit above-and-beyond to test your pet for allergies in the way we do for humans. It is expensive to have skin tests performed. Nonetheless, a pet’s allergic skin disease is often severe enough to warrant these advanced tests and it can be the most cost effective route to go in the long run.

There are a few limitations to testing for environmental allergens:  For both kinds of skin testing, pets must be off all immune system-affecting drugs for six weeks. That means no steroids, cyclosporine or antihistamines (though antihistamines may be continued up until one week before testing). No changes must be made in the animal’s basic routine (feeding, environmental exposures, etc.). 

When it comes to allergy testing, no one test is 100% perfect.  There can be different interpretations as to what constitutes a high or low degree of skin response.  Moreover, even when we think everything is well controlled in the pet’s environment (same food, same shampoos, same everything), pets can have different immune responses to allergens on different days or different times of the year. Stress can interfere with responses, too.

Your pet’s allergies are often a complex problem with multiple factors at play.  Finding out specific allergens that are affecting your pet can be useful in itself; because knowing what is causing the problem can help you avoid some of them. Sure, you won’t be able to avoid pollens, but wool, jute, cotton and fleas?

Knowledge of your pet’s allergic reactions can make a huge difference as to how carefully you approach these substances and enable you to remove or limit them from the equation.

The next step is testing basic treatments to determine what will work best for the individual pet.  We look at the response to diet change, shampoos, dietary supplements, immunotherapy, judiciously chosen drugs such as antihistamines, steroids, flea medications, cyclosporine, antibiotics, antifungals, local treatments, etc. Response to treatment can be a significant indicator of what is going on with the skin. Depending if the pet’s problem is seasonal or not will affect the duration of treatment required. 

Depending on your pet’s response to treatment and your comfort level with drug therapy or its expense we can either choose to stick to what we know already works or we can move on to further testing or treatment options.  The goal is to provide your companion a healthier, more comfortable life.

And They lived happily ever after...

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