Be Aware of Apoquel, Anti-itching Allergy Med For Dogs!

Our dog tends to have an allergic reaction once or twice a year.  For some reason, her allergic and itching have gotten worse since we moved from Southern California to Southern Utah 2 years ago.
She was doing okay for the 1st year, her itching seemed in control. But the 2nd year came around, her itching and allergic reaction had gotten so bad that around her eyes become black and swollen. Her eyes look like Panda eyes. There was no more hair on all of her paws and they look as though she was wearing black boots.

We first took her to a vet hoping to stop her misery. Unfortunately, her vet didn't have a definite answer for the cure as other vets we had visited before. For a temporary calming remedy, we gave her Benedryl as our vet advised. It did the trick for a short time but her itching became worse than before. So less than two weeks we had to visit her vet again to find out anything we can do for our dog. This time, our vet was excited to introduce Apoquel to us for stopping all her itching and allergy problems. On top of that, we were told that there is no side effect.

Hallelujah for Apoquel! That's what we thought for a while. It was a miracle pill. As soon as she took the first pill, her itching was visibly less and gradually it stopped within a few days. We were so ecstatic about this miracle medicine and told about it to anyone who asked us about our dog.

We made sure that we have Apoquel on hand at all times. However, our joy lasted about 5 months.  Apoquel's miracle healing stopped and she started having a fever all over her body and ear infection in her left ear. She couldn't sleep at night because of her fever and pain. Consequently, we were awake with her hoping that her misery of pain could be less and be comforted. Meantime, we were searching any information online about the side effects of Apoquel and we found many articles about it. The symptoms of the Apoquel's side effects were similar to our dog's reaction to the med.

For the next day, we visited her vet as an emergency but were told that Apoquel is safe treatment and isn't the problem. Our vet suggested that we should change her shampoo and her food. So we bought a new shampoo, a bag of new food, antibiotic and ear drop medicine for her infected ear at the vet. Without any positive news other than changing our dog's shampoo, food, ear drop and pills from the vet, we stopped at the Petsmart and found a pet food made out of Bison meat. Thinking that our dog would like a variety of her food repertoire. As any pet owner would do, our efforts to do anything for our dog went into overdrive.

As soon as we got home, we attempted to give her bath hoping that her new shampoo could ease her itching problem. But her response to the new shampoo was so horrific with her screaming, we had to wash her off immediately.

After a week or so, there was no sign of improvement on our dog's health, we decided to try a different vet who was recommended by our friends.  For our amazement, new vet requested us to bring all of our dog's medicine and shampoo. After the vet examined our dog and her meds and shampoo, he suggested that we should consider a steroid shot and throw away everything we had. Our dog had the shot once in CA and she did fine without a side effect. So our dog got the shot and new ear cream injection drops. We made sure to trash all her previous med, ear drops, and shampoo in the trash on the way out of the vet. Since then, it has been a month, our baby dog is doing better and her itching has been stopped.

We've got our dog back and our experience with Apoquel wasn't pleasant and hope that other dog owner should research about the drug first and make the best decision for their dog.