This may sound weird but when it comes to dog allergies, I have a guilty conscience.
We lost one of our family members over the July 4th weekend.
She was a kind and gentle Golden Retriever named Abby.
When I look back on her life, I can't help but feel some guilt that I could've made it better had I learned about dog allergies earlier.
I can't say that I should take the entire blame for this, however, because I think about how many times I took her to the vet because of an ear infection or some sort of skin problem and our vet only treated the symptoms and not the underlying cause.
Later I learned more about dog allergies and how a lot of her problems were caused by them.
One of the hard lessons we learned about dog allergies was when my wife dropped off our dog on the back porch one afternoon and had to run a few errands.
She came back around two hours later to find our Golden Retriever chewing herself uncontrollably underneath a table.
She had chewed so much that her entire hip was red and inflamed and bleeding in some areas.
This event was probably the biggest eye-opener for me.
We found out while at the vet that she had a dog hot spot.
The vet had to shave her entire hip and clean it so that it would heal properly.
It turns out that Golden Retrievers are genetically predisposed to dog hot spots.
That certainly didn't make this any easier to see.
For the next two weeks, she was forced to wear an Elizabethan cone so that she wouldn't chew on that area anymore.
They also gave her a sedative and you could tell she was simply miserable.
We took our dog back after she had healed.
Her vet was curious to see what progress he had made.
Unfortunately, we once again treated the symptom and not the underlying cause.
Don't get me wrong, making the dog comfortable and stopping her skin irritation was extremely important, but it was my responsibility to follow up and find out why this happened in the first place.
Had I known more about dog allergies before this happened, I could've taken steps to prevent the different types of allergy symptoms.
Looking back over the years, perhaps I could've stopped her from having a dog hot spot or multiple ear infections.
She was a sweet and wonderful dog and she deserved better.