Hyposensitization Therapy

[aj2251]

I have a british bulldog that suffers with skin allergies.

I have tried many natural things, including feeding raw, herbs, and elimination diets.

Over the New Year his skin became so bad we just had to take him to the Vet and try it their way, antibiotics and macrolone. This has been somewhat better, but no miracle cure by any means. He's fine when on the macrolone, but within 2 weeks of weaning him off he inevitably has another breakout. Given the weather change and a new cortisone/anti-everything cream, after the 1st week of being weaned off this last course of macrolone, and a small breakout occured we just tried the cream with great success. I should also mention here that he has been eating Royal Canin Hypo-allergenic kibble for the last few months. This, I believe, has helped stabilise his condition, at the very least has stabilised his bowel movements which have always been soft to runny and frequent.

We have now reached a point where if we want to go for allergy testing that this is the time to do so as he is the most stable he has been since he was 1yr old, he's now 2yrs old. I think given weather and such he will be able to stay off the macrolone for the minimum 6wks before being tested. Then I guess we decide should we go ahead with the immunotherapy/hyposensitization.

My vet thinks he will refer us to Sydney Uni dermatologist. He's looking into it, apparently the Vet he used to refer to has moved to Adelaide. Our vet has already warned us that many go to the specialist and still wind up with their dog on cortisone therpay as needed and that hyposensitization is about 75% effective to some degree.

So, my question is...who has gone ahead with this therapy, what was the cost and was it worth it?

Thank you

[sas]

I'm affraid we don't have a positive situation.

The longest my dog has been off Cortisone is 12 days and that's us trying everything we possibly can, so we have never been able to do the Withholding period for Intra-Dermal testing.

We did do the Blood Allergen testing and then the desensitising injections with no success at all, that was about $500.00.

I have known people to do the Intra-Dermal and then the Injections with no improvement or they have had to stay on the injections for the life of the dog to keep any improvment going.

I think I have only heard of a few dogs that have had improvement that I have read about here.

I'm sure there's more but I just haven't read about them.

Have you tried Atopica, expensive but maybe within your budget for a dog the size of a bulldog compared to my Dane

My advice to anyone with an itchy dog these days is get into see the Derm before you go on Cortisone because you may never be able to stay off it long enough for the withholding periods.

Edited June 3, 2011 by MEH