Allergy testing for dogs?

Question

My dog has allergies and every treatment the vet has suggested has not worked. I'm thinking about having her allergy tested. Has anyone else has this done on their dog? Did it work well? How much did it cost?

Answer 1

Both my dogs have allergies, my Lab has environmental allergies and my Pit Bull has food allergies. With the Pit Bull we did trial and error because the food allergy test will not narrow it down to a specific. So after time and trial we found out he was allergic to beef and keeping that out of his diet has fixed all issues. My Lab has been the difficult one and he has environmental, those test are more specific and the intial testing was @ $300.00 plus all the shots after ward. I decided that I would not do it because I hated the medicines including steriods he was getting and were not working. I feed my dogs' holistic foods which have made a huge difference so I started to holistic treatments which work GREAT and have NO side effects. My dog gets Azmira Yucca Intensive with Allerg' Free and it has worked amazingly. It takes time to build in their system but no he has no problems and no health problems because of the common treatments. You can get the stuff at a Natural Pet store or at www.azmira.com. I also used Richard'sOrganic Incredible Skin spray to treat his skin originally and it is the most amazing stuff you will ever buy if you have an itchy dog. Good Luck.

Answer 2

i completely disagree you can control the food you feed you more than likely can't change the environmental allergen you live around unless you want to move and as far as the testing it is the same vets usually can tell whether it is an environmental or food allergy just by the signs but they usually recommend doing both both tests are usually around 150-250 dollars Its a simple blood test that you send out it is good to know what your pet is allergic to either way but honestly the shots efficacy is still being questioned and i dont think that i would ever do this to any pet i owned i would do both allergy tests if my dog had allergies god get her off the benadryl ASAP if anything get her on chloraphanaramine an over the counter antihistamine but you really need to get her on atopica which is perscription but spendy :( no no no no no ok so they will draw blood from a leg vein they will send it out to the lab it takes a while for results i want to say at least 4 weeks which is long in veterinary medicine but rather common in human they will get a report it will tell you everything they tested for and there will be elevations on the ones that she is allergic to then from that you either eliminate potential allergens but a lot of them you cant like grass unless you dig it up and pour concrete but then what if she gets out and walks through grass so if it a lot of allergens or ones that you cant eliminate like chicken etc. are present then you can do the allergy shots with this you are given 3 vials they all include all the allergens that your dog has then you give as directed which is usually once daily and then using all the vials you wean down you dont shave you just give it like a vaccine most often owners report no resolution but improvement there are also special prescription diets you can get really you need to seek a dermatologist or at least another benadryl should not have been prescribed for this type of allergy reaction if anything they could have prescribed temeril P instead

Answer 3

you don't need that the vet should give you pills and you give them to the dog till it goes over my dog (yorkie) has it and its not happened since the pills were 8 bucks my vet really seems to care and hes very reasonable. dont' need tests right now he has allergeries so give him pills and be done with it. maybe the suggestion is get another vet.