Is Atopica the culprit?

The allergy shots have began for Riggs but at the same time Mama continues to search the internet for other possible causes and remedies for Riggs itching.  One of the medications he has been on is called Atopica.  Many of the side effects are things Riggs showed signs of when he had a severe reaction.  It is very possible that the medicine that was suppose to help his itching was instead making it into a much more severe issue.  Now it will just take some time to see if he has any more severe reactions or not.  Hoping for the best.

Open up and say aaahh

Now that Riggs is on a non protein based diet we can no longer wrap his pills in liverwurst.  Anyone that owns a pet can relate on how big a challenge it is to pry a dog's mouth open and shove a pill way back in his throat and get him to swallow it.  Some days are easier than others.  Of course the pill does not taste good so Riggs starts shaking his head and drooling at the mouth trying to get the gross taste out of his mouth.

Pill taking time

So today's challenge was getting Riggs to take his pills to get over the Mange he has.  So first we attempted to just feed it to him.  Yea riiiiight.  He just sniffed it and looked at us like “You’re kidding me right?”  Next we wrapped it in some lunch meat.  Failed attempt number 2.  He figured out the pill was wrapped in the lunch meat.  Let’s try some peanut butter.  Failed attempt number 3.  Zero interest in peanut butter.  Shoved it into some liverwurst and score!  Down the pills went.

Mange

Riggs has been itching and scratching quite a bit lately so we took him to the vet to make sure he does not have fleas.  He does not have fleas but instead has something called Mange.

Mange: is a class of persistent contagious skin diseases caused by parasitic mites.

Apparently he has the demodectic mange version.  Also called demodicosis or Red Mange, demodectic mange in dogs is caused by a sensitivity to and overpopulation of Demodex canis if the animal's immune system is unable to keep the mites under control.

The vet did a skin scrap and looked at it under the microscope where he saw the little mites.  Riggs immune system it appears is not developing as fast as he is currently and having difficulty fighting off these parasitic mites.  So home we are sent with pills to fight the battle of mange.  Oh joy.