A Juju Update
I took Juju to the vet last week to get her annual vaccinations and heartworm medication--and also to ask about her scratching, which had seemed to escalate in the last week. For the most part she is in great shape as a full-grown, 55.6 pound 1 year old shepherd mix. Just sick with allergies. The vet said she almost hoped it were fleas or mites because those are treatable--unfortunately, it's just allergies ('tis the time of year, I guess) for which there is no cure-all. So she gave me a spray for the severely itchy areas--like her paws, which she has chewed bare spots on almost all of. I gave her an oatmeal bath. Then she suggested some various over-the-counter medicines to try (like benadryl).
If you know me then you may know that I am not big on taking medicine. I very RARELY take even an aspirin for anything. In fact, I have to be feeling pretty miserable indeed to try something other than drinking water or sleeping to cure a headache. So I felt out of my element in the drug aisle at Wal-Mart trying to figure out where the allergy medicines were. I was looking for things like diphenhydramine and chlorpheniramine--I even feel more intelligent just writing those words! Did you know that there are a lot of different types of medicine out there? Thankfully I was able to find Equate brands of each of these different drugs and have been trying them with Juju. The "benadryl" (diphenhydramine) seems to possibly be working, but Juju's still scratching. I guess we have to wait for the weather to turn colder for the final "cure." I guess it's good practice for being a mother??
4 comments:
Poor JuJu :(. I understand wanting make them better and not being able to do much...
On Friday the class is coming over for movie night at 7, come on and bring Sarah if you've no plans!
So did the dog get children's allergy benadryl or adult? I think this was an important fact left off the blog entry.
Poor doggy.
It's gotta feel kinda weird buying Benadryl for your dog, though. I mean, just kinda strange...
Ok, Lee, since you asked...at first I bought the children's benadryl (grape-flavored chewables)--which Juju would gladly eat right out of my hand. But did you know that no matter if you get children's or adult size, the tablets are all 25mg apiece. And for a dog Juju's size the vet said I should be giving her 50-100mg 3 times a day. So when you figure I need to be giving her 4 pills at a time (up to 3 times a day), I decided to not buy the expensive kids chewables anymore and instead opted for the generic brand of swallowable pills that you can get 100 of for $4 rather than 24 chewables for $5. By the way, Juju will eat these pills if I just put them in her food, too. She's not really a picky eater. (Now you may see why I chose to leave off the sordid details from this from this blog entry...) ;)
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