I'll be honest, I'm not a big fan of holistic medicine. I realize people are genuinely trying to help, and I do appreciate the thought, so I don't want to step on toes. I simply don't understand it at all. Not to mention, the only holistic vet I can find in my area with a website (I like to pre-vet my vets before I decide to pursue using them) wants to charge $60 for 15 minutes and $20 every 5 minutes thereafter for a
phone consult, without seeing my pet at all. That just seems morally wrong to me, somehow.
Crazed, do you happen to have any specific brand recommendations by any chance? One thing that none of my vets can figure out is why every time these allergies flare up like this, he becomes next to impossible to keep weight on, so far regardless of which food he's on. It's hard to tell body condition in the photo I posted, but although he's nowhere close to emaciated (he's teetered on it a couple times in the past), he has a lot of muscle wasting and his heavy, thick skin tends to A-frame over his spine. I've tried several types of food, ranging from 5-6 star brands on dogfood analysis.com (Instinct, Blue Wilderness), to intentionally testing him on lower quality, lower protein food (Diamond) because some Bulldogs just don't process higher protein well. Surprisingly didn't make a lick of difference as far as weight or condition on either end of the spectrum, and he required around the same
quantity of food per day just to maintain what little weight I can keep on him.
However, when he's on something that causes his allergies to subside...he practically becomes an "air fern." :wall:
About Atopica, that was basically my derm vet's final recommendation if all else fails. She wanted me to try the steroids first because Atopica is very expensive and apparently tends to just
stop working anywhere from 6 months on the drug and up. We were
hoping to knock down a lot of this stuff between the steroid and some more heavy antibiotics, then keep him maintained once he was weaned off of them. And, well, he looked like a completely different dog within days of starting the steroid. Unfortunately once he began tapering off, that was that. So Atopica is definitely on the short-list. I haven't tried MSM yet, I honestly forgot it was suggested.
I have thought about putting him in something like this
http://www.k9topcoat.com/group.asp?grp=24 but after inputting his measurements it said no recommendations. Got to love a hard to fit dog with weird body proportions, right? My other concern is that...well, this is the dog that likes to swallow foreign objects and I'll admit I'm concerned about him deciding to tear a chunk out of something I put on him and swallow it. Maybe he needs to live in PJs and an e-collar.
Or maybe I should concede to the really big hamster ball...