Does Atopica For Dogs Work and What Are The Side Effects?

So Maddie is primarily allergic to her humans which, as you might imagine, is a reasonably rotten outcome. Especially considering that she is the sit in your lap and sleep glued to your hip in the bed variety of dog.

Having tried the home remedy route it was time to try something new. It was time to enlist the bigger allergy guns.

Our vet suggested that there was a newer medication on the market that was seeing great results in her other patients. The primary drawback was cost.

And when I say drawback I mean the ‘I’m not spending that kind of money’ kind of drawback.

She had said previously that a one month supply of Atopica (daily medication) was in the neighborhood of $130, and that my friend is a neighborhood I don’t live in.

Fortunately, as the story goes, the manufacturer had reduced the price of the drug (damn kind of a multi-billion dollar corporation like Novartis, no?), and she had also reduced her margin, thus making the medicine almost affordable.

Heck for $40 a month, with the promise of sleep, I’ll give it a shot.

We were warned that the primary side effects of Atopica were nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. The vet suggested starting the medication with a side dose of an anti-nausea med – which I declined. Especially after she mentioned that most dogs do well on the drug even without the anti-nausea chaser.

Wrong choice.

Maddie was fine for about 4 hours. Then she started to vomit. That was followed by diarrhea. We’re talking about messing up the house style sick.

We were about the throw in the towel and resign ourselves to incessant itching when the vet pleaded with me to try it one more time – on a lower dose and with the anti-nausea chaser for the first 4 days.

The outcome?

Amazing.

I won’t say that she is 100% itch free – hell I’m not 100% itch free – but for the most part she is doing incredibly well.

Yes, I made the mistake of trying to put her back on regular food and learned the hard way that she is indeed still very allergic to chicken.

Dumb human.