Piper had an appointment for a full grooming today. (I really should post another set of before and after photos eh?)
One of the last things I wrote about Piper included a very sad photo of her and her bionic listening device. Well, I have some other interesting dog-related health news to report.
About a month ago we noticed that Piper was getting increasingly itchy. We tried everything we could. We switched shampoos, gave her oatmeal baths, looked high and low for fleas and ticks, took her for long walks in the cool night air to distract her from scratching, looked closely at what she’d been eating… but the itching got progressively worse. I was really hoping we could solve this problem ourselves but then she started waking us up with her scratching. She was clearly unhappy, poor thing, so we made her an appointment at the vet’s. They couldn’t see her for a couple days, so we gave her Benadryl tablets (at their direction) to lessen her discomfort.
A couple days later we were sitting in the waiting room; me and Emma and Sarah and Piper and my sinking heart. I felt terrible for Piper and also wasn’t looking forward to what would surely be reams of expensive diagnostic tests to help determine the source of the allergen.
I was in for an unexpected surprise. The vet took one look at her, ran his hand over her fur and said the one word I wasn’t expecting: RAGWEED. He gave her an injection of something to dull the itch, a special shampoo, a course of doggy-Benadryl and sent us on our way. All for $178 – which I was actually pretty happy about because I had expected it to be a lot more.
Can you believe it? We have a dog with a RAGWEED allergy. Mark looked it up and apparently it’s fairly common for wiry terriers like Piper. Piper is officially the third member of the family who has a ragweed allergy. (So now I’m REALLY looking forward to first frost.) But seriously, have you ever heard of a dog with seasonal allergies before?
