How soon after Pred can I feed raw?

I very much doubt there is a study... so I can't give you facts... but I do know prednisone is a very short acting steroid.

I would say wait a week to give the immune system some time to revamp itself
 

Thanks, Misskiwi. That sounds very reasonable. I just wasn't sure how long Pred would stay in her system. Poor dog has a headache, last night and today. She's a bit dehydrated, so I gave her some Pedialyte. 

ottoluv

The half-life of prednisone is 18-36 hours. I would weight three half-lives to make sure it's out of their system. So to be on the safe side wait about 10 days. You wouldn't be faulted for waiting 2-3 weeks however just to be safe.

 Good call... I knew I should have looked up the half-life... its actually longer than I thought it was. What dose is your dog on currently? Anything less than 1/2 mg/kg is no longer "technically" considered immunosuppressive... which can also be taken into account. I'd probably still wait 2 weeks just to be safe.
 

Emma took her last dose, yesterday. It was only 5 mg. Her first dose was 20 mg, followed by 10 mg twice a day, and reducing over a week.She weighs in at 18 lbs. 

Oh, and... FWIW... Emma is sort of a suppressed dog to begin with. She's a chronic demodex dog (who hasn't had an outbreak in over a year, record breaking stuff here....) with NASTY allergies. She had parvo as a pup, so her GI tract isn't really all it should be. A lot of folks wouldn't feed her raw, to begin with, but she's really flourished on it.

Should I maybe wait a little longer, considering her history? I'd ask the vet, but honestly.... she feeds her own dogs Science Diet. She wouldn't know, and might even be upset by the idea of Em eating raw. 

Now I'm going to give you a far far more conservative answer -- I know with ME, personally, the immune-suppressive results of pred act more like months than days.  It takes me several months to get my own immune system back on target.  I know with Demodex it typically takes weeks to get the immune system back on target if a dog has been mis-diagnosed and some vet was giving pred usually it takes almost 3 weeks to a month to cause immune-impact. 

It's not just the drug itself -- it's a dominoe effect where the drug suppresses the immune system but the effects last longer than just the drug. 

 I know when we were weaning Billy off the pred (while he was still on the cyclosporine) they had me do an ultra slow wean off to endeavor to make the body 'forget' it had been getting prednisone.  They didn't want me to drop the cyclosporine until more than a month after he'd totally been off pred and shoot -- it took months.

BUT that being said -- Billy had more time to be 'hooked on it' than Emma.  But if it were me I'd wait like a month just to stress the body less.  change = stress and she's been thru it.  If it were me I'd do some immune boosting with herbs before you switch food.

I've gotta get her a bottle of colostrum, tomorrow.  I've worked every day but Thanksgiving, this week, so I haven't had a chance to go by the health food store. I'll check out what herbs I have here, before I head out, and probably pick up a bottle or two of something immune-boosting. I planned on doing that, anyways.

I figured being on it for a week was different than being on it for months, like Billy was. I'm still not excited to see what happens in a few weeks. I was giving her that first pill, just struggling with myself, telling us both that breathing is more important than having hair (and her coat is SO NIIICE!!!), and cooking food really isn't *so* bad.

Emma says change is bad. She pitched a FIT to go to obedience class on Friday, after she missed her Tuesday class, so I took her. She worked harder than I've seen her work in a long time, and for two hours! I don't know where she gets the crazy work drive from. I told our trainer I was going to deprive her of work for a week before our next dog show to make her work harder...

As much as Em doesn't like change, she does do better on raw than cooked, and not cooking appeals to my lack of time. I'll change her back after a while.... lol and some good immune stuff. I figure I'll go ahead and treat her like she has demodex, minus the baths. She'll get her extra oils and herbs and all that good stuff, since it's for her immune system, anyways, and hopefully, I won't have a bald dog in January.