Allergic reaction.

Dr. Marie replied:

Sorry to hear that Harley is so uncomfortable. While I can't give you a diagnosis over the internet I'll give you my ideas on what you have described to me.

It certainly sounds like there is some type of allergy going on. It's unlikely to be because of food. Although food allergies can happen they only make up a small percentage of dog allergies. Just because the other dogs are ok, that doesn't rule out environmental allergies. For example, I may be allergic to pollen and my husband may not be. If we both went into a pollen field, I would show allergy symptoms but my husband likely won't.

Unfortunately with dogs, it is often really hard to know what they are allergic to. And...if we do find the cause it is often something we can't really control, like ragweed or some other common grass or weed.

I have found that for most dogs, giving benadryl tablets doesn't help that much with allergies. A benadryl injection can often help in severe cases but that's not something you would be repeating long term. If I'm suspecting long term allergies I will often put a dog on very small doses of steroids during allergy season. In my area, allergy season is right now!

With that being said, it sounds like these are acute allergy incidents. They may not be because of a grass or weed but could be because of something like a bee or wasp sting. I have seen some dogs that get allergic reactions like this repeatedly and often we don't know the cause.

If this is happening a couple of times per month you could talk to your vet about putting Harley on steroids for a period of time. There are some cases where a vet will prescribe an epi-pen, similar to when children have severe allergic reactions.

Hopefully that helps...but unfortunately I've had cases like this where it is very frustrating because we don't know the cause.

Please let me know if you have more questions.

Dr. Marie.


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