A healthy Yuki on a camping/hiking trip, the allergies hadn’t progressed as much to her paws yet.
A quick recap: for the past couple years, we’ve been dealing with ongoing skin and paw issues with Yuki, thought to be allergies. It started with a little abscess on her paw, which grew until it was covering half her toe. Antibiotics and diligent cleaning finally gave us some relief after a few months, but as that was healing, she started to develop a rash under her chin. Every time she tried to scratch it; her chin would bleed.
I tried Neosporin for a while. Whenever I’d apply it, these granular reddish brown flakey pieces would come off of the affected area. There was little improvement with that idea. Then, one of the followers from our Instagram page suggested trying a zinc supplement because huskies and other northern breeds are prone to zinc deficiencies. We talked to the vet (always consult your vet first!) and he didn’t see a reason not to try it.
After little to no improvement with a zinc supplement from Whole Foods, I looked into a dog specific zinc supplement and had another trip to the vet. He gave us a flushing solution and Panalog to be used twice daily. The rash started to clear up thankfully, but her paws started to become infected again. Back to the vet we went.
After endless trips to the vet, bloodwork, and a couple rounds of antibiotics, I finally decided it was time to see a specialist. We made an appointment with a doggie dermatologist. As our initial consult, he did some skin scrapings and took a look at her sores. I walked out with an enormous bill and more antibiotics. When I went in for the follow-up appointment, the paw sores were a bit better but not healed, so more antibiotics…
I was disappointed. The specialist had not done anything different than my current vet. In fact, we’d done all these tests already, and he had the records, yet still did the same thing charged me 10x more.
Symptoms of Yuki’s allergies. The top is the patch I found on her tail, about the size of a quarter, but she doesn’t itch at it. The bottom is one of her paw abscesses that is healing. there’s another in between that tow and the next one in. They are all over her paws 🙁
With her labs coming back clean, showing no indication of anything out of the ordinary, no thyroid issues, nothing to indicate cancer, no levels out of the ordinary (the vet said if you looked at her blood results she looked like the perfect picture of a healthy dog), the only answer after over a year of troubleshooting was that it was *probably* allergies. Yuki has dealt with food allergies in the past. They created itchy paws and hot spots, never blisters and rashes on her face. She is older now, and her allergies may be from something in the apartment, or something environmental. I feel like we’ve tried everything for her.
Just a few months ago, I noticed a patch of fur missing from her tail and the skin was blackish looking. The vet recommended an anti-fungal/anti-microbial shampoo everyday…. EVERYDAY… I admit, I have not been able to do that. Bathing a husky is something I need to mentally prepare for. I need to train for it, and have a warmup and stretch session beforehand… I did try to just wash her tail and feet but even that isn’t doing anything. We also tried putting her on Zyrtec, but it didn’t help and made her incontinent.
Last week I finally ordered Apoquel, and I sit here anxiously waiting for it to be delivered. I’m really at my wits end. Her paws are just getting worse. Everyday she’s bleeding or a new sore pops up. I feel so bad for her, and I really don’t know what to do to make her comfortable. 🙁 If anyone has dealt with something similar PLEASE PLEASE contact me. Comment, email, find us on Facebook or direct message us on Instagram… whatever is easiest, we are just so lost with this.
