I was giving both all summer.
Feronia is off the Apoquel for the winter, because there aren’t allergens for her to react to. Her breathing is slightly more rough, but she’s still up for a 3 mile hand walk.
Feronia has done well over the winter, but the vet wants to start up the Apoquel before allergens really take hold. So she’ll be on it as soon as the vet gets the pills. Vet thinks it will take less time to taper since we’re starting with a less symptomatic horse.
I was just thinking about this thread. Last year we were doing 20 zyrtec a day plus monthly steroid shots. With that she was itchy for grooming but no raw spots except for the one month when we ran a bit late.
I’d love to try Apoquel. For any of the current users, were you doing injectable steroids before? Would you say the results were as powerful?
The one study I found was .5mg/kg. For a 1,300 lb horse that’s 590 kg or 295mg which would be 18 pills a day, right? I’m seeing some people treating .25mg/kg as the loading, which would be 9 pills. Are people doing a $30-60/day loading dose? This feels like a huge difference from the 5-10 pills I’m seeing above. Is there additional literature or is it more of a trial and error?
I’ve also just started back up for the spring to also start before allergies kick in, much easier to stay on top of it.
Re: dosing: the original studies done on apoquel with horses found 5 pills to be effective for 1000lbs horse. And they found more success in spacing out dosage compared to lowering dosage.
For my horse apoquel was much more effective than dex was when her skin allergies also became respiratory.
Feronia can’t have steroids, except as an inhaler, because she’s right on the line for being IR, and may now have Cushings, too. And yes, she got the $60/day loading dose of 10 pills twice a day, twice, as I tapered too quickly the first time. Ultimately we got to 5 pills once a day. But remember that she started it in early to mid summer, when she was desperately itchy and her breathing was rough. I’m hoping she will do better this year. And yes, she gets Zyrtec, too.
Feronia started up Apoquel a few weeks ago, 10 pills twice a day for a week, then 5 pills twice a day, now 5 pills once a day. In the past couple of weeks, our pollen counts have been rising, and so far she is fine.
