Categories: PETS

Pet Doc: Tips during Itchy Pet Awareness Month: prevention is key

KEARNEY, Neb. — July is Itchy Pet Awareness Month.

There are three main causes. Flea allergy, food allergy, and atopy – atopic dermatitis, which is just fancy for environmental allergy.

Dr. Brandon Beebout of the Beebout Veterinary Medical Center says there are a lot of the mainstream items that can combat this condition.

Number one, if your dog is itchy, especially around the tail base, we have to be on flea and tick prevention. That is really, really important. Fleas will make you itchy. One flea – if you are flea allergic – one flea can make a dog go bald on that back half, believe it or not. The other thing is fleas are a nuisance and they're kind of unsightly. If they're on your dog, they're in the dog's environment, which typically is inside your home. Prevention is the key. It costs about two years of prevention to treat the fleas in the home, and that includes shutting all your cupboards, hiding the goldfish, and bombing the house with this stuff, and then not being able to vacuum for a while because we're trying to kill everything in the environment.

The adult flea is 5% of the flea population. They are uncommon as we kind of get into August, September, October, before we get hard freezes.

“That's when we start saying, please come out, so we just want to be on that prevention because that makes it easy for your veterinarian to say, “All right, we're down to food and environment”, said Dr. Beebout.

Treatment starts right away. When puppies come in at eight weeks, 12 weeks, 16 weeks, every month, they are treated with a single of Simparica Trio flea tick heartworm, and then once they get to six months, your pet will be will have a heartworm test and we will see where they're going to sit on that weight range, and then we'll get them six packs from there on. Prevention is definitely the key and start early.

Nebraska is known for having four seasons. If your dog has no seasonality with its allergies and ears and rears, you could potentially have a food allergy. A lot of people say, and I just had this yesterday, “You know, I changed the food and I didn't think it helped much.” We're pretty picky on the companies because you could be allergic to chicken, and while we have this $120 bag of food and its jaguar protein – and it's typically an animal protein that you're allergic to – it could be running on that same conveyor belt. Maybe not, but we just don't know as veterinarians.

Dr. Beebout said he is pretty picky on the companies that he uses, where they've done that quality control. With skin issues and itchy issues from food, that takes three months to cure potentially. You do a three-month food trial before you find out “did that work?” A lot of people will go through “Man, I've been through all these foods, spending all this money…” A trip to your vet for a talk and they will get you on the right track.

And then that leaves environment, which is really, really common. The BVMC sees lots of itchy dogs. We have a lot of fauna in Nebraska, the wind blows, we're in the elements. There's a ton of products on the market today. Allergies are forever, and there's three ways to treat the environment, go do the allergy testing and find out what you're allergic to and desensitize them through injections.

There are comfort therapies. Cytopoint is an injection for anti-itch, Apoquel is a pill for anti-itch. Occasionally there's some inflammatory and short courses of prednisone steroids will be administered. Dr. Beebout doesn't like to leave them on a long time. Fish oil is a really good thing to be on. It just is like a varnish over wood where you're not getting slivers. It just an extra barrier. One of the things we don't do enough of is topical. There are some great products out there, very, very new and innovative. Medicated baths, if you can do those at home. Some of these mousses that you can rub on specific spots – armpits, inguinal area, around the ears and face, folds if you're a Pitt, a Boxer, and Bulldog.

“We just don't do near enough topicals so we can reduce the amount of systemic approach that we can do, but allergies are forever,” Dr. Beebout said. “They tend to be progressive, so we want to get in front of that and get a good long term therapeutic plan. Our aim is not to cure unless we're going to do the allergy testing and we're going to manage that pet, and if it becomes unmanageable, then we'll talk about the allergy testing and get that kid figured out.”

Beebout Veterinary Medical Center