Our old Cocker mix would get super itchy every fall. I tried Claritin and it didn’t help, eventually ended up doing a course of Apoquel and that would knock it out. He was also an anxious kid, he would lick his nose obsessively (so gross, he’d grow like a fungus on it, and there wasn’t much you could do about it really), and he would also take himself to a quiet carpeted corner of the house and just dig-dig-dig the carpet, sitting on his butt, totally lost to the world until you touched him. I would wager the Prozac and Apoquel together should help her the most.
Going out on a limb here. Any change of laundry detergent, either for bedding or your clothing?
Good thought! No, but that might be the kind of thing that I need to keep in mind.
She starts Apoquel and Prozac today and I got her ophthalmology appointment moved up to next Friday. Depending on her response to the Apoquel and results of her bloodwork we will either go with allergy testing or keep looking for something else inflammatory. She’s been a bit unusual, medically speaking- the allergies are explained by being an Arctic dog in Maryland and her anxiety is not uncommon for her breed as they are very sharp dogs, but she also has diabetes insipidus and the eye thing. Of course, I also have an anxious asthmatic cat, another cat whose Himalayan pug face means that in cold or humid air he needs an air filter and a humidifier or he wheezes and also has an unexplained low white blood cell count and absolutely nothing else the matter with him, and a cushings horse. We aren’t doing uncomplicated around here.
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Ground flax helps my dog’s itchy eyes, and my horse’s sweet itch. I get it at the feed mill and grind it myself. Dog is about 45 pounds and she gets 2 heaping tablespoons a day.
I’ve had two allergy-ridden dogs and I know it can be very frustrating.
I would try moving her to a “sensitive skin and stomach” food - one that has no corn. Several brands have them - Science Diet, for instance, and Pro Plan, I think. This helps our Russel Terrier quite a bit.
We also have him on Apoquel. Oh, what a difference it makes. Once he stabilized due to the successful food-and-med combo, we tried giving him half an Apoquel instead of the full pill. He does great on half a pill. A few days a year his seasonal allergies come on too strong and we’ll give him the full dose. He’s been very stable and happy on this routine for several years.
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This happened with my dog when I accidentally introduced soy into her diet. Took quite some time to resolve after I figured it out and removed the offending ingredient.
Hope you figure it out soon!
Do you have carpet in your house? I had old carpet and I went through this with my shelter pup Syd. Steroid shots helped but didn’t completely eliminate the issue, and he got Zyrtec and a novel protein food at the same time. My vet didn’t want to use Apoquel because of Syd’s age and unknown medical history. He didn’t want to turbocharge any cancer cells.
When I moved into my new-build house with no carpet except a new area rug in the living room, his allergies disappeared almost immediately.
I hope you get relief for him!
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Your dog is an arctic dog—have you fed a fish based diet with salmon oil?
Astrid loves that you asked this question. 
She eats Orijen Fit and Trim and has done well on this for several years. First 4 ingredients are poultry, next 3 are fish. She does get salmon oil. Everyone in the family is on marine-derived omega 3’s (except my husband) as ordered by my horse’s vet, who only treats the horse. Long story, which may only be interesting if you have a Cushings horse.
We are 24 hours into Apoquel and Prozac. I accidentally mis-dosed her Apoquel this morning and gave her about 1/3 of it; I didn’t pick it up yesterday so I missed that she was to get 1.5 pills, whereas I gave her only half of one. We also had another vet visit today for her poor eye, which resulted in (knocking madly on wood) considerable relief. It is no longer swollen and visibly irritated! And we have had much less scratching and less compulsive grooming. If I start to scratch her rump or her head, she buys in happily, but she isn’t desperate. So since she has very little Apoquel on board, I’m going to guess that a lot of it was about her discomfort and her worry about being uncomfortable, poor girl. I hope that we can keep that eyeball happy until she sees the opthalmologist and we can figure out what’s going on.
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My guy has seasonal itch issues. We think they are plant/pollen related but he goes to work at the tree nursery/ garden center with my DH and I everyday so who knows what the actual plant is that causes it. He usually starts itching in late April/ early May, goes on Apoquel and can come off it in November-ish. That along with Welactin fish oil has been the magic anti-itch formula for him. Hope it works for you!
Check out Thera-Clean baths. They’re at some groomers and vets’ offices. It uses just water to deep clean the animal’s skin. I never heard of it but Dr. Judy Morgan mentions them on a video about the dangers of Apoquel.
Just wanted to sympathize; we have an itchy poodle who does MUCH better on prozac and cytopoint (was apoquel before but he is hard to pill; the prozac is compounded liquid). He still has some issues, but isn’t itching, at least. And the prozac also helped with his anxiety, which was kind of so “him” that I no longer pegged it until he was chill (I didn’t even KNOW he could be an “easy” dog, but he’s no longer dog-or people-reactive, and his whole life is better). The prozac took a while to start working (6 weeks, maybe?) so even if you don’t see any change initially, make sure you stick with it for enough time to make a difference.
Apoquel has helped my allergy prone doggo. Tried other treatments and baths and nothing helped. She gets a pill a day and the scratching has stopped. She was also allergic to cats so now, with no cats, it’s calmed down even more. Her scratching was so bad, and it wasn’t localized but all over, she was getting sores from scratching so much, her skin was inflamed, and she was just miserable.
I thought this was Chronicle of the HORSE???
Well, since this thread has been bumped by someone who hasn’t realized they’re in the Menagerie section…
The winning formula was:
- Get her eye some relief.
- Prozac.
We still don’t really know what’s going on in her eye, but her vet practice suggested that when she develops irritation we start with an eye wash and THEN medicate, and that eye wash step appears to have made a difference. (The opthalmologist doesn’t see anything obvious, naturally, and recommended against doing surgery now though acknowledges that we may get there eventually.)
We have been talking about anxiety meds with her vet practice for almost as long as we’ve had her. I really wanted to work down the training and physical stuff first, and in retrospect, I took too long with that. We had her on PRN trazodone for awhile to see if that would help her manage stressful situations, and it was hard to tell if that was actually helping her with her anxiety, or if it was just sedating her- she is a VERY cheap date. Once we got the dosage right, I did think it helped her fit all her feelings into her body, but that also brought into focus how many feelings she had on her non-trazodone days. She’s now been on it for about a month and we saw it kick in early. She’s better able to tolerate disruptions to her routine and the behaviors that could escalate into stereotypies, like grooming and scratching, stopped almost immediately. We ended the Apoquel early and the scratching has not recurred.
Doubtless in the spring we will have to go back on Benadryl to manage the environmental stuff, but I hope that we have hit upon a strategy to keep her comfortable in her body and mind until then.
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This is such a great update to hear. Yay for getting a plan!
