Allergies

Hi Everyone,

I have a beauty of a white American staffy Thor. He is three years old and has started to get allergies. So far I'm not happy with the Vets prognosis.

She advised us there is no point doing the allergies test because he is white. We should just put him on quarter zone for the next two weeks and some other drug for the rest of his life that will more4 than likely give him cancer.  

I would like to know some other peoples experiences please.

I feel the allergy test would be a good thing. I'm also happy to bath him all the time or find some creams/lotions natural or not that we can used instead of the harsh drugs!

His symptoms are pink/red skin patches mostly in the arm pits, around his groin, on his tummy, on his danglies but only where they hit the ground, pimples on his face. The red areas can go red raw.

Never on his back or on top of his head.

All advise welcome  

Hey there sorry to here your boys suffering, my girl suffers from allergies and the vet on the first visit prescribed steroids and antihistamines. After that I try to keep it under control myself, I was her feet after every walk and rub her down with a towel. I give her piriton when I feel it's not settling down, I rub coconut oil on the red bits and strap and really bad bits up with honey on the strap. Hope this helps

Come say hi :- https://staffy-bull-terrier.niceboard.com/f7-new-member-introductions

Doing what Hayley suggests will help. Suki has food allergies as well but once we knew what she was allergic to it was easy to control.

Have you spoken to another vet if not happy with the first one ?

Raw feeding can help with allergies  

Thanks! Ok ill try the coconut oil and honey

Raw feeding means real food like rice yeah?

Ill try take him to the vet again next pay

There is a whole raw food section here, have a read through when you can. Lots say it really helps as Sazzle said.
https://staffy-bull-terrier.niceboard.com/f125-staffordshire-bull-terrier-raw-food-diets

Raw feeding is raw meat and bones   

Try a second vet for a second opinion if you are not happy! Does he scratch at his ears at all? Or chew and itch a lot?

I'd get a second opinion although it might not be much use unless they've dealt with breeds that are more susceptible to skin allergies. We made the mistake of corticosteriods (prednisone), dips and the other stuff the vet of our first dogo argentino recommended us to do and it was the the thing we did to him. He ended up with immune problems and died at a young age as a result of immune mediated disease. When we got our future dogos, and they also exhibited skin allergies we went the natural way and changed their food. We discovered that a few of our dogos over the years were allergic to chicken and shampoo (even hypoallergenic).

The thing with allergies is that they can happen suddenly like we found out with our last dogo - chicken and eggs were fine for a long time then suddenly he became allergic around the time he became a teenager.

This is a photo of our last boy Marco who came out in this reaction a day after the kennel he had been at washed him before coming home to us (and they used an oatmeal hypoallergenic shampoo too).





He would also break out like this with chicken and eggs. Antihistamines for a couple of days would get lessen the reaction and he would be back to normal just over a week later.

I second trying raw feeding even though I never did try it with my previous dogs although I am now with my current boy.

Im sorry for your loss I hope to avoid this. That looks lime a terrible reaction! The vet did mention giving him a special food for 6 weeks or something. Hopefully its a food allergie and manageable

Thanks everyone for your input. Im glad I posted here!

Zeus too has allergies and I've tried to steer away from using cortisone creams/steroids etc. I'd get a second opinion as I wouldn't take that opinion from my vet, it's an easy fix just giving some steroids to sort it out but I'd go through the route of finding out whats causing the reaction.

I've now moved Zeus onto raw food, just because I want to know what he's eating and if his allergies carry on, find out what it is through a process of elimination. He's going through the detox phase right now so he's scratching more than usual, but once this goes, I'm hoping it clears up.

My last resort would be to get an actual allergy test, for which I have to be referred by my vets. Personally, I don't pay too much attention to what my vets say in terms of diet/nutritional needs because quite frankly, they don't know too much about it. They're always pushing these 'special foods' for which they are getting paid to sell. E.g. my vet keeps pushing me to go onto Hills ID which is designed for allergies, but after researching into the ingredients in there, there's alot of stuff with question marks and alot of stuff that has been proven to cause things like cancer etc over a period of time.

LouiseAnn wrote:Im sorry for your loss :(I hope to avoid this. That looks lime a terrible reaction! The vet did mention giving him a special food for 6 weeks or something. Hopefully its a food allergie and manageable

Thanks everyone for your input.  Im glad I posted here!  

Thank you. A terrible reaction but easy to control once we found out the triggers. Wish we knew this with our first boy
I'd be wary of the special food your vet is going to give your boy - the food they give you is most likely not the best, even if it is labeled as food for "sensitive skin". A friend back in australia who has an american bulldog also had pretty bad skin issues and was finally sick of all the drugs the vet had his boy on including the "special food" and this has been on going for a couple of years. After I told him to ditch the food (which was eukanaba btw) and switch to either a high quality grain-free (we had success with that - just made sure it was free from chicken) or go raw. He went raw and his boy has made improvements. He's also going through the detox but my friend says he can't believe his vet made him take all those drugs and shitty food.
Thing is, when it comes to nutrition - vets don't really know anything about it and will push certain products which have been proven to cause more health problems (good news for the vet I suppose to keep on getting sick animals to make well again   )

Diane that is a horrible reaction, poor boy At least you were able to find out what it was so that he could heal!

Bane started getting itchy and after a few vet trips and shampoos and piriton not helping they suggested a 6-8 week food trial on their "special food" which we didn't want to do so went raw instead. We've been on it a month and he is still detoxing so still itching.
We went back today to see the dermatologist and he is thinking environmental allergies rather than food at this point (got a mini lecture about raw again from him) so has taken some blood to do some tests for that side of things.
You could start off trying to change his food and go from there. If he doesn't improve what's the harm in allergy testing? At least you then might have some answers and options on how to tackle the problem and not just one that could potentially kill him.

So I have decided I would like to try to go raw. And rince his problem areas every couple of days with plain water. I'm totally new to this forum... wheres the recipe bit? Lol

This is the raw feeding forum

https://staffy-bull-terrier.niceboard.com/f125-staffordshire-bull-terrier-raw-food-diets

Have a look in there and any question just ask xx

This is a pic of the food the vet recommend. Has anyone had any experience with it?

I personally wouldn't give this to my dogs.  Here are just some of the ingredients that our dogs shouldn't consume.  Haven't gone through all of them.

Starch, Hydrolyzed Chicken Liver, Soybean Oil (preserved with BHA, propyl gallate and citric acid), Hydrolyzed Chicken, Powdered Cellulose, Dicalcium Phosphate, Calcium Carbonate, Glyceryl Monostearate, Potassium Chloride, Iodized Salt, Choline Chloride, vitamins (Vitamin E Supplement, Niacin, Thiamine Mononitrate, Vitamin A Supplement, L-Ascorbyl-2-Polyphosphate (source of vitamin C), Calcium Pantothenate, Biotin, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Riboflavin, Folic Acid, Vitamin D3 Supplement), DL-Methionine, minerals (Ferrous Sulfate, Zinc Oxide, Copper sulfate, Manganous Oxide, Calcium Iodate, Sodium Selenite), Taurine, Ethoxyquin (a preservative), Beta-Carotene.

Ethoxyquin is a preservative and used as a pesticide - http://www.dogfoodadvisor.com/red-flag-ingredients/ethoxyquin-dangerous-dog-food-additive/

Soybean Oil (preserved with BHA, propyl gallate and citric acid)
http://www.dogfoodadvisor.com/red-flag-ingredients/bha-in-dog-food/

Glyceryl Monostearate http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2012/11/is-your-dogs-food-making-him-sick-2490712.html

And I've also heard some pretty bad stuff about these products. Just did a quick search and came across this which sounds pretty worrying.

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/pets/hills.html

Omg!

LouiseAnn wrote:Omg!

Yep!!!! Pretty disgusting what they put in dog food and when a vet is recommending a particular product full of toxins, it really makes you question what they actually know.

There is a lot of rubbish in processed dog foods   

Some of those stories are so sad
I don't even understand most of the words in that ingredients list so wouldn't know where to start with what was good or bad. Feel much safer on raw

Bane wrote:Some of those stories are so sad
I don't even understand most of the words in that ingredients list so wouldn't know where to start with what was good or bad. Feel much safer on raw

It is really sad and the only reason I know some of those words is because I've come across them before in research when I was looking into kibble for past dogs and know that they are bad news. There are some good dry food out there with good ingredients and without fillers or other crap but I think raw is probably the safest to go because you know 100% what you're feeding your dog.
Its pretty sad business when a vet recommends products that they are paid to push instead of what is best for an animal