<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px; ">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. </span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 17px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="4" style="font: 14.0px Helvetica">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. </font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 17px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="4" style="font: 14.0px Helvetica">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.</font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 17px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="4" style="font: 14.0px Helvetica">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...... </font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 17px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font face="Helvetica" size="4" style="font: 14.0px Helvetica">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. </font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 14px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 17px; "><br></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Elizabeth</div></body></html>