Wiggle - Day 28 Visit to the Vet

Today Wiggle has been to have his intradermal skin testing. The test involved sedating him and then shaving a patch of fur before injecting common allergens to then see what his skin reacted to.

As you can see from the photo's, the skin appears lumpy but this is because the injections are made into the skin, rather than an injection through the skin to tissue (as with vaccinations, for example).

Wiggle was, as always, a very good boy and let the vet and nurses do what they needed to. Bridget, the vet, very kindly agreed for me to take some photo's for Wiggle's blog. Although the skin looks like it has had a strong reaction to all the allergens, the results showed that Wiggle is allergic to 4 allergens: house dust mite, red clover, rye grass and forage mites.

Obviously no dog can be kept away from these allergens so as Wiggle's body has had such a servere reaction, he is now on a drug called Atopica which works to stop the immune system producing the reaction. Wiggle will start off on a low dose and then I will build it up over the coming days, 50mg for 3 days, then 100mg for the next 3 days and then on to 150mg thereafter.

As Wiggle's skin is so sore and bald, I'll continue with the Malaseb baths as these work locally and his skin had started to improve during the 2 weeks he was being bathed.

Wiggle is a little wobbly this afternoon after coming round from the sedative, but he's taking it all in his stride and was giving Bridget his paw after his treatment. We'll be going back in 2 weeks time to see how Wiggle is getting on with the Atopica.

Good news for today was that Wiggle has put on a little weight in the last two weeks - he's gone from 27.2kg to 27.9kg, which is a nice, steady increase.