My black lab is 6 years old. About 6 months into her life she started experiencing allergies and recurring UTIs. We don’t have pet insurance as by the time we thought about it she already had predetermined health issues and knew insurance wouldn’t cover anything related to these issues…
The allergies - for years of revolving infection and treatment apoquel worked for awhile, until it didn’t. She was nearly half bald and literally ripping her own fur out, she looked like a street dog with mange at her worst. We then got food sensitivity testing to learn she is allergic to beef, duck, chicken, milk, turkey, or soy in order of most sensitive to least. We tried so many different diets between wet food, pork based, raw food, prescription HP diet food prescribed from the vet from royal canin, nothing eliminated the allergies. We suspect she also had environmental allergies. Anyway more trial and error dropped us to cytopoint injections, which seem to help but only last 8 weeks and are $200 an injection.
The bladder issues - from a young age she had recurring UTIs and we often thought it was in relation to her allergies, where she was constantly licking and picking at her skin. After we got her skin under control with cytopoint the UTIs persisted often coming back as soon as 2 weeks after a clear urinalysis and culture. I spoke with our vet if a vulvaplasty would benefit our dog and they agreed it could, but wasn’t a 100% guarantee. I did lots of research and knew of a couple friends who had to have this done to their dog with great success. We completed the surgery and we actually went 1 whole year without a UTI. When one returned we felt so defeated, she is now on a urinary SO HP diet by royal canin. Our vet is at a loss of what could be causing the UTIs so persistently, and has just chalked it up to be an anatomy and prone to UTIs. The prescription diet is working in terms of chemistry, her bladder is no longer cloudy and ph levels improved, but she STILL has a UTI. The amount of times she’s been prescribed antibiotics for infections is way too many to count and I imagine this is contributing to antibiotic resistance.
The vet has said she will need to by on cytopoint and the prescription diet for the rest of her life likely. The prescription food is $210 for an 8kg bag and only lasts about 4 weeks due to the breed size. Combined with the costs of injections I am feeling very defeated on what I can do, I want to do anything to improve my dogs quality of life but I’m so frustrated that we cannot solve her UTI issues. Can the allergies and UTIs be related? Are there any alternatives? She is young and acts as if she always feels good and is such a good girl I really just want to help her. Any advice is appreciated.