Need some help brainstorming because this one has me stumped! Sorry it’s long, just want to give the full backstory to see if anything makes sense!
2 year old female pit mix, had mild allergies that come and go since we’ve had her-biting her paws, dry itchy skin, head shaking. She’s been on a wide variety of dog foods(high quality), not a history you would expect for a dog with food allergies. Long story short, we put her on a new food, she did well on it for awhile, but then we took her out of town for christmas with us, she was worked up being in a new place and didn’t really want to eat much. When we came back, she decided she hated that food and refused to eat it for hours until she got REALLY hungry(and normally she would inhale it). Nothing was different, it was the same large bag we’d already fed halfway through, and she’d already been through a couple smaller bags of the same stuff. Nothing was different about her, physically but then one day she started gulping and smacking her lips at night. I thought she was just thirsty and didn’t want to get out of bed to drink (yes, she is really that lazy).
A few days later, we woke up and she had exploded in hives. All over her face, chest, armpits and legs. Vet gave her a steroid, told us to put her on benedryl and she wasn’t sure of the cause. We took her off that food immediately, just gave her some turkey peas and oatmeal. The hives stayed away all day, but then overnight they came back. This cycle went on-she would start gulping late at night, the hives would be there when we woke up, then they would go away all on their own, even if we didn’t give her anything, only to reappear overnight.
We took her to a different vet and she said it was a food allergy and not a contact allergy, based on the location of the hives. But it doesn’t make sense why she would be only having trouble at night? She sleeps in our room, usually on our bed but sometimes in her open crate or on the floor. We wash all our blankets and hers (including the blankets in the living room and in her crate) in the same detergent, we’ve used it before with no problems and we switch that up a lot too, it wasn’t new. She can spend hours in her crate on those blankets while we are gone during the day, and sleeps on the bed or on the blankets in the living room all day when we are home. We tried having her sleep on the floor thinking it was some product on us making her break out, but that didn’t help, neither did locking her out of her crate overnight.
She is an apartment dog and because of leg issues and her fear of the outdoors, she only goes outside to the same spot to do her business, so she’s not getting into anything outside. We switched her to a limited ingredient diet (pretty much just fish and potatoes) and have weaned her off the benedryl. But the cycle continues. If I stay up late and she is in the living room with me, she will be fine until usually after 11pm. Then she would start gulping and getting dry mouth, even when she hadn’t been in the bedroom at all. So it’ls not something in there, it’s literally her being allergic to the night!
The severity varies greatly, she usually starts swallowing hard and lip smacking late at night, most mornings now she is okay except for a small bump or 2 on her face and some swelling in her ears, but it quickly goes away on it’s own during the morning. Some days it’s worse, some days she’s totally fine. Just when she seems like she’s getting better, she gets worse. Then better. Etc etc etc. I started giving her fish oil after reading about it’s benefits for allergies and after 2 days she woke up bump free, thought we had found a cure. But then this morning she had several hard little lumps on her face and above her tail (which now seem to be the common places she gets lumps, in addition to swelling in her ears).
We are just stumped. I just cannot think of ANYTHING that is different except that it is nighttime. That’s it. We are going to get her allergy tested, but I imagine it’s going to be one of those things where they say she’s allergic to EVERYTHING. I just don’t understand what would cause this sudden onset of issues and why it would only occur at night, and it’s frustrating when one day it’s fine and the next it’s bad and there’s nothing that we’ve changed, making it harder to pinpoint anything.
Sorry for the extended version but I guess it’s necessary to explain why I’m so frustrated. Anybody have an idea what the heck could be going on?
