One of the most common problems presented to all veternarians is the itchy pet, and as a holistic practitioner, the same holds true. Most often the source of itch is allergies. With conventional medicine, the treatment is often suppression and in difficult cases this can mean endless rounds of antibiotics and steroids. As clients and veterinarians become frustrated, they often begin to look for alternatives.

Lets begin by looking at the different causes of allergies and discuss the ways in which these can be diagnosed. General treatment recommendations will be given when possible, but given the difficult nature of these conditions, treatments often need to be individual patient based to be effective.

Allergies can be to fleas, food or the environment. All of these conditions can look very similar to each other as well to other disease processes that affect the skin. A veterinarian should be consulted to be sure that your pet does not have mites, an infection, or other diagnosable problem before concluding that allergies are the culprit. Keep in mind that even for a proficient veterinarian, diagnosis can sometimes be harder than you would imagine. These conditions are not mutually exclusive, and often a bacterial infection is actually caused by an underlying problem such as allergies.

This is not to say the skin problems can not be adequately diagnosed. There are often differences in the history or in the pattern of itch that is suggestive of one cause of disease or another, and with a good history and exam your veterinarian will be well on the way to determining the cause of your pet’s discomfort. For example, inhalant allergies in dogs (allergies caused by pollens, trees, molds or grasses) tend to be seasonal and often include itchy feet and ear infections as part of the history. Cats do not seem to suffer as much from inhalant allergies as do their canine counterparts. Flea allergies tend to concentrate around the tail base and stomach in dogs and often cats as well. Finally, with food allergies, you see year round problems which may show signs predominantly around the mouth, ears and anus.

I do encourage clients to work up the cause of the allergy. If an allergen can be identified, a change in environment or husbandry can improve the situation and certainly changing the diet is far simpler and better for your pet than forever fighting an allergy to the chicken you feed each day. Different allergies will need to be diagnosed in different ways. For example inhalant allergies can be readily diagnosed by a blood test while food allergies require a diet trial. Common food allergens in animals include protein sources such as meat and dairy as well as corn and wheat to name a few. A hypoallergenic food trial which lasts two to three months may be needed to determine whether a diet change may result in improvement in the skin condition. This diet needs to contain ingredients that the animal has not eaten before and thus has not had a chance to develop and allergy to. This food is most likely going to need to be homemade or purchased as a prescription food as most “lamb and rice” type formulas that you find in the pet store will have other ingredients in them which could invalidate your diet trial. Please note that food allergies can not be accurately diagnosed by blood tests. Many of these tests are available but are of little to no diagnostic value.

One last note regarding food. There are many animals whose conditions improve dramatically when taken off of processed food and are put on homemade. These changes may take a while to notice or may be almost immediate. I regularly see patients with frustrating skin problems who show such improvement.

Flea allergies are usually diagnosed by history, observation of the pattern of itch and finding evidence of fleas. Often this is seen as “flea dirt” which is actually flea excrement. This excrement does in fact resemble dirt. If you are unsure, you can be differentiate flea dirt from garden dirt by placing a small amount on a white cloth or towel and then wetting the dirt and towel. Flea dirt well run red onto the towel as it is actually digested blood.

There are numerous ways to combat fleas naturally. See post on Fighting fleas naturally. These methods do, however, tend to be more labor intensive and may prove insufficient to eradicate a stubborn flea problem. Of the pharmaceutical products out there, I find advantage to be the safest and most effective. This product is designed to kill fleas on the animal and, when the treated pet sheds skin cells it will kill younger life stages in the house as well.

NOTE:Finding evidence of fleas can be especially difficult on cats. They tend to be fastidious groomers and can also have severe, body wide, reactions to even one flea.

Inhalant allergies can be readily diagnosed by a simple blood test. The difficulty comes after diagnosis. Some of my clients choose to try allergy injections which can work effectively in about 60% to 65% of animals in my experience. In other animals, treatment involves detoxification, improving the quality of the animal’s diet, boosting the immune system with acupuncture and supplements, and using Chinese herbs to both control the symptoms and help the animal become less reactive to the allergen. This is a long term process. These problems have often been ongoing for years and have been driven deeper still into the body by masking signs with the “anti” system of repeated doses of anti-biotics and anti-inflammatories. Animals treated naturally, will see their allergy reactions becoming less severe year after year as they work toward “health”.