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.

Our dog (approx 2yrs old, 80lbs German shepherd/pitbull mix) has seemingly developed intolerances to most meats..are there any 3 in 1 combinations that are non flavored? I hate to go the topical route because it seems not as effective as the oral version

Hi, I'm here because a I have a gorgeous goofy boy with extremely complex health. 

When Mambo was 2 he was diagnosed with idiopathic epilepsy, it took a few years to get the meds right, and those years were really hard. However he's now seizure free for about 2 years now at 6 years old on epipehn and gabapentin. 

In 2025 he ate a sausage treat from Asda that gave him the most severe case of pancreatitis many vets had ever seen and we nearly lost him. He was in hospital for about 3 weeks total, 1 at our local emergency and 2 at a specialist when they referred him there because he wasn't getting better.  He had a feeding tube, a list of about 15 different meds to get his stomach, pancreas and gall bladder working. 

He got better, he came home and continued to get better and we are now out of that terrifying time but we of course have a very strict low fat diet now. 

When we got him home after the pancreatitis we moved him from his butchers wet food to royal canin low GI low fat kibble. 

A couple of weeks after getting him home he started getting sore skin- he would always get seasonal allergies around late summer and get itchy eyes but it was easily managed and short lived. 

At first I thought it was the food, we tried loads of elimination diet stuff all while his skin just kept getting worse, the issue is any specialised diet had to be low fat for his pancreas and not have anything that isn't seizure friendly in too. 

He had antibiotics and preds for a while because it got so bad he was outright mauling and goring himself, he would bleed, wounds stayed wet and yeasty, it would clear up and then happen again when he re-injures himself (also preds is not great for a dog with seizures so a massive risk but we had no other option, we started really low but this was nerve-wracking as he was very anxious on it when he first started).  We were in hell, he had to be in a cone at night and was miserable and couldn't sleep with it on, we had socks, surgery suits, inflatable cones (didn't work because he has such a long snoot), we tried EVERYTHING.

There was a relatively new brand of hypoallergenic food with hydrolysed protein branded as low fat that had JUST low enough fat we could try him on it, this was the last diet change we could do and the vet agreed he needed to go on cytopoint and that it would be the safest allergy med for him with regards to his epilepsy and pancreas, we would have him on this food for 8 weeks while starting cytopoint and then tested elongating the distance between jabs once he had been on the food this long to see if it had helped, it sadly didn't.  We tried to book his next jab a week later than we usually did after this trial and he immediately got an ear infection and itching issues creeping back in.  We put him back on royal canin low fat and continued with cytopoint as it was working.  He was a happy dog again, almost completely back to normal.

He's been on cytopoint for just under a year now and at the end of the last jab cycle he started itching again and did some damage to his paws, this was thought to be an overwhelm because of allergy season, he had his next jab and seemed ok again, paws healed. 

A week and a half into the new jab cycle and it happened again and now I'm terrified because what if cytopoint isn't working anymore? We cannot go back to how it was I cried every day and so did he, we were all miserable. 

Because of his complex health I'm seriously terrified of trying apoquel or newer drugs like zenrilia.

Going back to his pancreatitis episode for a moment to explain finances.

He has a lifetime policy with napo, he had that in place a year before he even had his first seizure so everything went onto his insurance, then every renewal his insurance would triple. 

When we were in 2025 and he had his pancreatitis he rinsed through all 12g of his insurance getting better, and then some. 

We had to continue paying his monthly premium (of 160 GBP) even though his insurance wasnt useable on top of paying for his appts, blood tests, epi meds and now cytopoint injections. 

When we got his renewal in it had gone from 160 to 450 per month.  Because of the sheer cost of his medication and the necessity of having emergency funds for him we decided to renew but this will be the last year he has on insurance, this renews every may so we are already halfway through. 

My thinking is that if he needs more specialist care to get control over his allergies, a referral now is our last hope but it's a risk as you can't be 100 percent sure the insurer will cover a specialist referral. 

We are running out of options, right now I have a course of antibiotics for his current skin infection, a spot gel and some antibacterial wipes for when he comes in the door. 

It would be great if this was an overwhelm that we can grain control over again and then cytopoint can carry on doing it's job, but I can't help but worry about what to try next if cytopoint is truly not responding for him anymore as I know this can happen. 

I hear lots about zenrilia but it's largely the same as apoquel and I'm so terrified of putting my already chronically ill dog on an immunosuppressant.

Since we got Mambo, my health also declined, I can't work and I can't walk anymore either it's a whole other long and complex story but this means that funds are low. 

Even though it broke my heart I even looked into rehoming him early this year with the rescue I got him from and previously worked for but honestly, no one is going to take a dog that needs this much money.  Having him put down because of money issues is NOT an option because he has so much potential to be a healthy happy boy despite the way the world has downtrodden him.  Just like me.  This dog has my entire heart, he is everything to me, so I'm desperate to find answers. 

Has anyone been through similar and has any advice??

What meds worked for you?

I will be cross posting in canine allergy and canine epilepsy. 

Thank you for reading, love Lola and Mambo x