It’s summer in the San Francisco Bay Area and everyone is being hit hard by allergies. Every day, I wake up with a massively congested nose and watery, itchy eyes. Unfortunately, I’m not alone. Humans are not the only species to experience allergies — dogs and cats do too.
Being a general practice veterinarian, I see dogs and cats suffering from allergies every single day. In fact, dogs with allergies make up about 75% of my patients every spring and summer. Like clockwork, they start to pour in just as the weather starts to warm and the rains start to come down in spring.
Like humans, dogs can also experience hay fever-type allergies that cause them to sneeze all day long and develop watery eyes. More commonly, dogs develop itchiness. This itchiness is typically worst in the paws and the ears, but can expand to every inch of their skin.
First, it starts with the slurp, slurp, slurp sound of them licking their paws in the middle of the night. Then, a thump, followed by the rapid jingling of their collars as they sit their butts down and lift a back leg to scratch. In more severe cases, bacteria and yeast find their way into little breaks of the skin as a result of the licking and scratching that then lead to infection. This is when the skin becomes…
