[Dailydrool] Smelly bassets and food allergy

[PC]

Madder (April 1st basset) has always suffered badly with the smellies but
it's been sort of controlled with Malaseb shampoo and regular baths.
Recently she had a spinal disc prolapse and was rushed into the animal
hospital for an emergency operation. But they were really worried about
operating as her skin had broken out into the worst smelly and itchy attack
ever - probably due to the back pain and the stress of becoming paralysed so
suddenly. Anyway, they operated and fixed her back (Yay!) so she can walk
and run again perfectly and started her on new treatment and enrolled her
into a study about skin problems and allergies as they think she has an
allergy (testing didn't reveal anything that shouldn't be treatable) but the
treatments don't totally fix it. She had to go on a diet and treatment
(baths, wipes, antibiotics, flea treatment for her and house (even though
there were no fleas etc.)for six weeks to make her clean and then to come
off the food as the first step to see if the flare up reoccurred suddenly
when she went back to her old diet to establish if a food allergy was the
cause. The diet she had to go on consisted of hypo-allergic dry food OR
boiled potatoes together with a protein THAT SHE HAS NEVER EVER HAD BEFORE.
The protein never had before part is harder than you think to find but
luckily turkey provided an option for Maddie. I had to be careful though to
work out what she could have as egg and other proteins you think your dog
has not tried before are often mixed into dry foods so are often hidden.
Anyway she went the 6 weeks and nothing bad happened when she went onto her
old food though she still gets her flare ups from time to time so the next
stage is injections to try and build an immunity to allergens to see if that
can help her - though apparently that treatment is much more successful in
younger dogs but the vet school couldn't progress to this until everything
else had been tried. She's going back next week when I hope she can try that
line of treatment. Good luck with your smelly hounds everyone and I hope
this helps.

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