[Dailydrool] Hives

[Elizabeth Lindsey]

I'm an allergy sufferer with two bassets. It's been my experience  
that each dog produces an allergen unique to its own body chemistry,  
and it can take a while for your body to recognize that allergen as a  
"normal" part of the environment and stop reacting to it. Even though  
allergists may talk about "dog allergies" and give you shots for them  
as if it's just a single type of allergen, each dog has its own body  
chemistry that can put a special "twist" on things.

I also know that when there's a lot going on in the air, sometimes  
all it takes is just one more allergen to be the straw that breaks  
the camel's back and causes an allergic reaction, either respiratory  
or contact. In the winter a lot of molds become highly active and,  
come February, the trees kick into gear even though it looks like  
they're still dormant. Trust me, they're not! By adding Bentley to  
your family only two weeks ago, a basset producing allergens your  
daughter's body isn't familiar with, you may have tipped an already  
precarious allergen balance you weren't aware of.

My allergist uses the analogy of a full bucket of water. Each  
allergen is a drop of water that goes into the full bucket. The  
bucket can hold a certain number of drops, but then there's the drop  
that's one too many and makes the bucket overflow, which is the  
allergy attack. He compared allergy shots to being an eyedropper that  
removes the bucket's water one drop at a time.

There was one horrible August when I was dogsitting a standard poodle  
at my house, a delightful dog I'd been around a lot and had had in my  
home before. But when the ragweed outside kicked in, my allergies  
went into overtime, and I discovered that I could smell that poodle's  
body odor for the first time ever. When I'm having an allergy attack,  
I become hypersensitive to the odors of those things that are setting  
off my allergies; I can smell things no one else around me can. So I  
knew the poodle had suddenly turned into a huge contributing factor  
to my streaming nose and eyes. My own basset, I couldn't smell at  
all. After the poodle went home, I still couldn't smell our basset,  
so I knew that in the seven years we'd had her, my body had become  
used to her and had stopped identifying her allergens as bad things  
to react against. The poodle, an occasional house guest, however......

My allergies have improved over the years because I've gone through  
allergy shots and we also don't allow the dogs to sleep on the bed  
with us. That keeps us from breathing in their fur and dander, at  
close range, for eight straight hours a day. For most of Jane's life  
we didn't allow her in our bedroom at all in an attempt to keep that  
room relatively free from her fur and dander, though I know we still  
brought it in with us on our clothes and the forced air registers  
helped circulate it through every room of the house (oh, for hot  
water radiators!). We also run HEPA air filters at night and keep the  
mattress and box springs encased in plastic, which keeps dander from  
seeping into the mattress and then poofing into the air when we lie  
down. I suggest washing the dog beds more frequently in hot water to  
kill the allergens on them. It's not a good idea to allow the dogs on  
upholstered furniture because the new basset's unfamiliar dander is  
embedding itself in that and getting recirculated into the air every  
time you sit down on it. Likewise, carpeting will be holding the new  
allergens, so vacuuming more often would be good, with a vacuum that  
doesn't have a high emissions rate.

Elizabeth
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