Rocco is a seven year old white Japanese Akita.
Previously owned by another family member we had been in contact with him since he was a pup and began to care for him in 2011 when his symptoms first started and took full ownership of him in late 2012.
1- 6 years
Rocco didn’t show any signs of allergies or skin conditions until he was 6, previously to that he was a healthy happy boy.
2011 – 2012
His symptoms began with an eye infection, very watery eyes and swollen to the point he was struggling to open his left eye. Trip to the vet for antibiotics and eye drops, this seemed to clear up infection at first however other symptoms started to show. Hair loss at the tip of his ears was quite considerable, small clumps would come off at once, then hair loss across his whole body began and he rapidly lost all of his undercoat. Scabs began to appear and his skin seemed to be covered in a dark brown flaky substance. After numerous trips to a variety of vets Rocco was diagnosed with food allergies wheat, beef, chicken, rice, pork etc basically everything he was used to eating.
He was prescribed:
- hypo allergenic dog food
- Antibiotics (three a day)
- Medicated shampoo (we were instructed to bath him once a week)
- Steroid tablets (1 per day)
- Steroid eye drop (daily)
We began to put him on this course and lasted approx 4 months, I saw absolutely no improvement in his skin or health although I am not sure about the improvements internally to his system. The eye drops did help with drying out his eyes as they water excessively and are itchy.
As you can imagine we weren’t very happy with giving him this amount of tablets however wanted to do what was best for him (or so we thought). It came to the point that we weren’t able to administer the anti-biotics or steroids as Rocco hated them (had a very strong smell) as his diet didn’t allow us to conceal the tablets in food (his food is dried) it became near enough impossible to get him to take them.
Thank you for reading
Karla Andrews
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