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antihistamines for dogs

pabloescaban

pabloescaban

VIP Member
I've recently started giving my dog antihistamines because she's itching a lot.
I thought it was fleas but I've given her several flea treatments and it's definately not that and the itching continued.

she has half of one tablet of loratadine daily which is based on her weight.

This post is to help anyone whose pet is itching.

Google loratadine for dogs to work out the appropriate dosage.

You don't need to buy a named brand like Clarytin, Asda's own or Aldi's own are just the same and a quarter of the price.

She's not itching half as much now
 
depends what you used for the flea treatment if its shop bought your wasting your money and if its the well known frontline your wasting your money as its a outdated formula and giving dogs medication that are for humans should only be given with a vets approval as my mother in-law found out the hard way when she thought the dog was in pain and gave it half an aspirin only to rush the dog to the vets but only 2 days later the dog was dead through organ failure getting to the bottom of a skin condition is not easy but before giving any medication your first stop is the vets for advise guessing whats wrong is a bad idea
 
no guessing involved, but thanks for the input.
she has less than half the recommended dose for two year old children.
The flea treatments she received were PDSA advantage flea treatments, four weeks apart.

'Fleas are killed within one day following treatment. One treatment prevents further flea infestation for up to four weeks on dogs, three to four weeks on cats and up to one week on pet rabbits. '

inbetween these treatments she was bathed regularly with various flea shampoos and also skin relieving shampoos containing tea tree oil and other skin calming ingredients. she didn't have fleas but still itched a lot. she is allergic to something but I've changed her diet, bedding and even furnishings she occupies all to no avail. it's probably an epigenetic condition and I'm not going to pay a vet £500 to carry out 12 months of tests which will reveal nothing.
She gets like this every summer, it's not a permanent thing.

the Aldi antihistamines work perfectly well and they're 59p
 
as you say finding the cause of the allergy is difficult and as long as the antihistamines your using are approved by the vet it sounds like your doing everything possible
 
Yeah, there's a lot of vets online that recommend antihistamines for dogs, they list the pros and cons of each type and Loratidine seems to be favoured by most of them due to there being less side effects
 
so its not your dogs vet that's approved the medication ? what does your dogs vet advice you about the medication your giving your dog
The only advice I take when it comes to medication is my dogs vet
 
no it's an online vet.
I don't ask my doctor before taking an aspirin or applying antiseptic to a cut.
This is no different, she has a mild skin condition which is exacerbated during warm weather and is easily controlled with a babies dose of Loratadine.
Last time I let a vet treat a dog for a condition, they said it was Cushings disease and charged me 2000 quid over six months when in reality it was a stomach tumour which killed her.
what pissed me off more than anything was that I had to give her injections every day for something that she didn't have and her last six months were miserable because she was dying of cancer and not being treated for it. If they'd told me what it was on day one, I could have had her put to sleep, but they'd have only made thirty quid that way, so you can see why I don't take my dog to the vets for a mild skin condition, she'd probably come out minus several legs and with a bill for £800 under her collar.
 
I can see how you have lost your trust in vet's but most vet's only have the animals best interests at heart having pet's isn't cheap that's why I have insurance for mine and anyone claiming to be a vet online doesn't make it so after all if you have lost all your trust in your local vet why do you trust those online it's fine if your happy to give your dog unprescribed drugs that is on your head dut sorry advising others to do the same is dangerous no matter how small the dose is
 
It's dangerous for people with no sense maybe, if someone has enough sense to find the correct dose for their weight of dog then it's fine. What would a vet do if I took my dog and asked if I could giver her antihistamines? - Apart from charging the £38 consultation fee I mean - he'd weigh her and tell me it's 1mg per kilo of body weight. I know how to use scales so I weighed my dog and she gets slightly less than that dosage. The first twenty pages of google results for 'Loratadine for dogs' doesn't have any indications that it's a bad idea, so I'll stick with that. On the other hand, before my last dog died, google results for her symptoms all pointed towards stomach tumours, but i decided to ignore this and believe my vet instead. She died of stomach tumours six months later as I mentioned earlier, so you could say taking your dog to a vet is irresponsible when better information is available online.
 
so lets do away with vets and we will all self diagnose our pets that sounds fantastic
or take out pet insurance so its not as much of a financial decision and find a local vet through recommendation
plus there's charity's like pdsa who can give you at the very least professional advice for nothing which you can rest assured that advice is for the wellbeing of your pet and not for financial gain
 
I think the vets at the PDSA have got more important things to do than pacify idiots with regards to changing a dogs diet or giving a dog an over the counter medicine which is obviously safe for them.

A lot of dogs are sensitive to pollen and hot weather. I don't think taking them to the vets every time they scratch their arse is a good idea really so we'll have to agree to disagree
 
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