My Dog is on Steroids

I took Bella to the vet on Tuesday because she has been uncomfortably itchy for weeks. She would scratch and bite herself to the point to where she was losing fur and we were losing sleep. This is not a new development as Bella has always been prone to allergies.

As you can see in the following picture, she has patches of fur missing near her hind legs and the skin is redder than normal.

She is allergic to some unknown substance which can pretty much be anything (pollen, grass, food, carpet, etc.) and we can't figure out a proper solution. I decided to finally take her in because her eyes were becoming irritated too and that has never happened before. I wanted to make sure that it was indeed allergies and not ringworm.
They gave Bella a steroid shot which is simply a temporary solution. It has relieved her itching, but the shot will wear off in two weeks. The shot is exactly what I did not want her to get because the steroids make her drink more water and almost always leads to accidents in the house.

And, sure enough, the next morning she urinated on our carpeted bedroom floor for at least a minute straight. It was like the scene from Austin Powers when he pees a seemingly endless stream. The largest puddle was remarkably in the shape of Africa and then she took a few steps and peed somewhere else. The stench was so rancid that it drove me out of the room.

Do you know what warm urine at five in the morning on your bare hands feels like? The Hubby offered to clean it up so that I could return to bed, but his system of cleaning any bodily fluids that come out of Bella is so incredibly inefficient that I would rather do it myself.

So now Bella is on a strict sweet potato and venison diet and we are treating her with anti-itch spray, allergy pills, and special ear drops. We'll find out in about four weeks whether or not her special diet is the cure.

In her short 3.5 years, Bella has had parvovirus, three separate surgeries on her hind legs, countless ear infections, and acne. On a positive note, she is now only 70 lbs compared to the 94 lbs back in March that led a vet to compare her to an overweight 200 lb woman.

I have a special folder holding all of her medical records and the numerous bills that come with her symptoms.

Let it be a lesson to all to never pick the runt of the litter. Unless it's a pig. If it's a pig, name it Wilbur and teach it to do back flips.