Benedryl Help

 Spring has sprung- and Lucky will itch if you look at him the wrong way! Benadryl is a hit or miss for him- sometimes it works, sometimes not so much.

Because Lucky is a small dog, I buy the adult tablets (they're pink) and I break them in half. I believe the dosage for them is 1-2mg/pound, so Lucky weighs about 15 pounds, and the tablets are 25mg. if he's REALLY itchy, I give him a whole one.If that still doesn't help him, I have to suck it up and get some hydroxozine from the vet.

How often do you bathe her? A lot of times if it's contact allergies, a good oatmeal bath will help. Just don't bathe her too much or it'll dry out the skin.

The only thing he exhibits when he takes the high end of the dose is he's really sleepy. It's a constant battle with him- every time we think we have them under control, it rains more, and things grow more!

 Give Ari some butt scratches for me! Hopefully she can sleep better. 

If Ari is around 50 lbs, I'd give 75 mg. I give that much to Sassy every morning and every evening. I buy the generics in caplet form (elongated pill) and they work fine. You might notice a bit of drowsiness but don't let that deter you. You really need to give it AM & PM though and don't give less than enough. When Sassy was going thru some really rough times and I was at home all day, I'd give 3x a day (every 6 hours). I also give fish oil caps daily. I found that the shampoo that helped the most with itching was Nu Sal T. I only ever found it online, but I bought a few bottles at a time. A bath with that would calm the itching for longer than anything else. Good luck. I know what a frustrating battle this can be.

I always get the regular tablets.

1-2 mg/lb.

Plain Jane version.  Get the caplets...pink pills...25 mg each.  1 25mg pill per 25 pound of dog.  Make sure (if you are looking at a generic brand) that there is no acetaminophen in it.

Buddy is 125 pounds.  If he needs Benedryl, he gets only 4 pills (100mg).  I don't think you have to worry about that with Ari.  If she is 50 pounds...2 caplets.  You can always half one too if needed.

 You can expect her to get drowsy and perhaps even sleep a while.

 Also, cool water in the bath. Water that's too warm can aggrevate them. 

 We bathe when really dirty. This time of the year, it can be a couple times a month if a quick wash down with water won't work. She swims in the river and can get very stinky with that and her penchant for rolling the foulest things she can find in the woods. Then there's the mud....oh how she adores the mud. Poor Lucky! Ari gets like this occasionally in the spring and summer, but she seems particularly bad right now and was really pathetic when she woke me up at 3ish am to help scratch her.

I did just give her an oatmeal bath on Saturday in hopes it would help. Didn't seem to affect her one way or the other, poor girl.

Thank you for the heads up on checking the ingredients. That will make shopping muuuuch easier. I seriously had no idea there were so many variations of Benedryl out there.

I hope this helps her. I feel so bad for her right now. 

 Yup, I bathed with cool water. Actually, I usually bath with coolish water. She's not fond of overly warm water. Then again, this is the dog that ran into the river...in December.

 Thanks so much everyone. This is all incredibly helpful. Ari is roughly 60 lbs. I'll weigh her though when I get home though to be sure. Heck, if she gets drowsy I might be able to actually get some stuff done around the house for a change She thinks following me everywhere, tripping me up, and stealing stuff is "helpful" when cleaning or doing laundry.

Found this on a site...don't know if it matters or not.....

Dosage every 8 hours
Dogs under 30 lbs and Cats :  10 mg
Dogs 30-50 lbs:  25 mg
Dogs over 50 lbs: 50 mg

the_gopher

We bathe when really dirty. This time of the year, it can be a couple times a month if a quick wash down with water won't work. She swims in the river and can get very stinky with that and her penchant for rolling the foulest things she can find in the woods. Then there's the mud....oh how she adores the mud. Poor Lucky! Ari gets like this occasionally in the spring and summer, but she seems particularly bad right now and was really pathetic when she woke me up at 3ish am to help scratch her.

You miss the point here -- allergens cling to their coat and are actually transmitted THRU the skin.  Not just thru their complicated little nose (remember they have a Jacobsen's Organ between the roof of their mouth and nose so acents/allergens can get trapped in there for a good long while)

Just wiping off their feet every single time they come in the house can really do a TON to rinse off pollens/allergens that cling to the feet (since they walk thru EVERYTHING) -- in fact, using a dish of plain black tea can be **incredibly** effective to help battle paw-licking.

So more frequent bathing can really be a huge help for allergies.

 "Benedryl" -- actually a whole range of antihistamines work for dogs -- including Tavist, Claritin, and a whole host of others. "The Pill Book Guide to Medication for Your Dog and Cat" -- Amazon still has it and it's about $6.99 and it's an awesome book.  It gives you the dosages for most anything.

Hydroxyzine -- they used to give that to humans too, but it effects the emotions and can cause some serious depression so they usually don't prescribe it for humans.  I took it once and cried for a week (literally).  It doesn't seem to react emotionally with dogs -- but vets like it because it has to be prescribed -- most any other type of allergy med is over the counter. 

But honestly sometimes it is helpful to see how the dog may do on different things -- but give at least a 3 week trial of twice a day for ANYTHING (becalise like I said -- their nose is complicated and it can take days and days for everything to go thru their system).

General NO NO's -- CoBuHue made a HUGE good point -- the big thing is you want to make sure there is no cold medicines or pain meds in whatever you give.

No Tyelenol (acetaminaphen) -- it is a HUGE poison to dogs.  In fact ONE Tylenol (regular) tablet can kill a small dog.  FACT.  Watch your purse.

No decongestant (the dose is vastly different for a dog).  You just want the antihistamine as the active ingredient.

OPTIONS:

Seriously there are other options.  Homeopathy can work really really well on dogs.  Billy was THE WORST allergy dog ever and at this point we control it ALL with homeopathics beyond the fact that I had a good thyroid panel done on him thru Michigan State (and now I use Dr. Dodds) and I supplement his thyroid. 

A breed-specific thyroid panel is honestly your best friend -- and for any dog over the age of ONE, I would tell you to do a breed-specific thyroid panel (either via Michigan State or Dr. Dodds via Hemopet.org) BEFORE you do any other thing.  Before you try antihistamine, before you do anything. 

Even acupuncture can really help dog allergies. 

Hope this helps. 

 Ari has a 2 year appointment coming up for the vet and I'm going to ask for some more testing. The appointment is this month, so I'm just waiting because right now I can't rearrange my work schedule any sooner. Actually, I'll need to demand it since I've inquired before and they just shrug it off. Getting to the holistic vet in our area is problematic at the moment. Hopefully my work schedule will slow down soon so I can scoot out early some days (I work 45 minutes south from my house and the holistic vet is about 10 minutes north of where I live).

The benedryl doesn't seem to be helping unfortunately. She's actually not licking her feet at all. She doesn't bother with them. It's her inner thighs/belly (the major problem area), a spot on one foreleg and a couple spots on her hind legs. It may not even be allergies. I can try taking pictures and posting them so y'all can see what I mean. There are no marks that make me suspect she was stung, bit (she is completely flea free as well), there's no rash per say outside of red areas from where she was biting/licking. The spots on her legs are just white, from where she removed all the fur.

Her back is also very itchy. If you scratch her back right now, she does the whole leg kicking thing which isn't normal for her. I am seeing a bit of dandruff, but nothing major or concerning. She's had mild dandruff all winter, due to how dry our condo is. She is not doing any rolling around to scratch her own back.

Her chronic ear issue has also flared up at the same time the itchiness started on the rest of her body. This is very similar (almost exactly so) to an episode we had last summer with her, when they suspected contact allergies and prescribed something to her for the itching (I don't recall what it was and I'm at work and don't have her records with me) and an ointment for her ears.

Sharon -- if you will EMAIL me (pm's aren't easy for me) with your zipcode, let me see what I can find as far as a holistic vet.  A "holistic vet" may or may not be a GOOD one, nor necessarily accessible. 

Every antihistamine works differently -- that's one of the reasons there are so many of them.  How much benedryl are you doing and how often? "not enough" is a total waste.

HOWEVER -- I'm not going to just assume this is allergies.  and it's not good that you're getting blown off -- the very first thing I'd tell you (particularly if this is at ALL "on both sides" of the body -- literally broken out on the left side AND right side in the same spots).  That patterning you're mentioning sounds to me very like something I've seen on Billy -- VERY atopic (not food-related) but also responding better to herbs than antihistamines.  But it's exacerbated and related to stuff like staph and yeast more than anything -- so you can't just control the allergy and have it heal.

Also -- that's a big deal -- you have to try allergy meds for AT LEAST three weeks (the same med the whole time) just to even *begin* to see if it's helping.  Simply because it's so complicated for allergies to truly work their way thru the body.  Often treatment for allergies winds up being a whole bunch of different "maintenance" stuff far far more than ONE "cure" (cos there IS no cure for allergies).

But if I have your zip code I can begin to search for something sensible for you.   (across from my name click "Contact" and then click "email" pretty please?)

 Callie the holistic vet I found was through that website you recommend. I cannot think of the site right now, as my brain is fried. I am doing 100mg each dose. Ari is 60 lbs almost on the nose. I'm still going to dose her with Benedryl for awhile yet. At the very least, it's making her sleepy (at least for now) and not as interested in licking/biting.

I like our vets and won't change, but I'm not opposed to supplementing it with a holistic vet. I just don't trust the SO to take her to the holistic vet alone  Our vet is quick to treat symptoms (aka prescribed something to treat the surface condition), but I've long suspected there is just something going on with her as whole. Anytime there's been a skin flareup, her bad ear gets worse and the gunk coming out is gross. It used to be that both her ears were bad, but as she matured one ear now doesn't have any problems at all. Being the bad owner that I am, I forgot to flush her ear out last night. *please pass me the newspaper so I can repeatedly hit myself*  Her skin seems to have periodic flareups like this one and the chronic ear issue is frustrating.