My name is Sam Meisler and I am a small animal veterinarian. Today, we’re going to talk about canine atopy. What is atopy? Atopy is a skin condition that causes a dog to be very itchy. The typical areas that we see them itchy are the feet, the sides of their face and the sides of their bodies. Now, it can cause itchiness in other places as well, including the ears. So, if you have a dog with chronic ear problems then atopy may be part of the problem.
Now, that is just some of the story. What actually triggers the dog to be itchy? Atopy really is an allergy and what it means is the dog is allergic to things that it’s breathing in or coming into contact with. These can be pollens, grasses, molds, that sort of things. Fibers, cotton, wool, all those items as well and these triggers this itchy conditions.
Now, how do I treat atopy as a veterinarian? Well, we can treat atopy in two ways and sometimes we have to use both; one way we can treat is just treat the symptoms and we find a lot of times we’re in the position where we have to do this and this is when we’re treating with antihistamines to decrease the itch or treating with steroids or cortisone type drugs to also treat the symptoms particularly the symptom of itchiness.
On the other hand, we can try to get to the root of the problem and actually treat what is causing the allergy. And you can do this in two ways; one is where the drug called Atopica which gets to the root of the problem and decreases the immune system’s response to these pollens so it won’t cause itchiness, that’s how Atopica works. It does take a few months for this to kick in so don’t be discourage if your dog has been on an Atopica for a couple of months without effect, give it a couple of months more, three to four months before giving up.
The other way to get to the root of the allergy is to have a test done and there are two ways to do this; either a skin test or a serum test to test for the actual allergens that your dog is allergic to, you know the actual pollens, the actual fibers, the actual components that are out there in the environment that your dog is allergic too. And you can do that as a skin test or a serum test. From those two tests, one of the other is we do the same thing, we essentially then make up a set vaccines for your dog to desynthesize it against these allergens. So each dog will have its set of vaccines. And that is what is truly called an allergy shot.
Those allergy injections will be given daily at first then every other day and then taper down until usually about once a month after you get about six months into it. That way is probably the best way to go about it. But it does take time; it may take four to six months before you see an effect. Meanwhile, you have an itchy dog and that is where we get back to the first way, the symptomatic treatment where we may be treating symptomatically while we’re waiting for the results, on these other tests and while we’re waiting for these tests and allergy kits that we make for them to actually work on your dog. But that gives you a basic idea of how we treat canine atopy or canine inhalant allergies.
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