Allie's trip to the hospital

I'm so sick of allergies! We spend over 3 1/2 hours at the emergency vet on Thursday night after I noticed the right side of Allie's face was swelling up like crazy. He didn't even look like himself he had lost his wrinkles in his forehead and under his right eye and they had turned into huge puffy masses. When we tried to touch his face to see if there was a bee stinger in it he cried out in pain. Wegot scared, called Dove Lewis and they told us to bring him right in. They ended up giving him a Benydryl shot which didn't seem to work on it's own so then the gave him a steroid shot. After waiting with him for what seemed like forever we noticed it going down slightly and decided to bring him home.

They couldn't tell us what caused it, only that they have dogs come in with the same problem on a nightly basis.

All day friday he was still really puffy. Saturday he looked a ton better. However today he's looking swollen again. I'm going to give it another day and then take hime to his normal vet if it looks bad. I'm starting to wonder if he may have an infection or something and maybe the swelling is fluid build up. If anyone had any idea let me know.

You can really tell from the pic but he's still swollen (not horribly) in this pic. He's also drugged out from all the anti histamines we've been giving him.

Finally!

I'm happy to report that after a long battle we finally seem to have Allie's allergies under control (knock on wood). It seems to be a combination of things due to the fact that he's allergic to so much. Here's what we have going on now:

-Plegits face wipes (medicated wipes we clean his wrinkles with to get rid of pollen and dirt)

-Royal Canin Z/D gold label non-allergenic food (we've tried everything short of making his food ourselves and this is the only thing that's worked)

-Allergy shots (once every 2 weeks, builds his immunities to the things he's allergic to)

-washing blankets/ couch covers in hot water often to reduce dust mites.

- no other treats, limited access to plastic (we're not yet sure if he's allergic to it)

He's been happy and allergy free for a couple months now!

Allergies Again!!!

Poor Allie, we tried to switch his food over to the same food Otis is eating since it has more nutritional value and also because the food Allie is eating is so expensive. He was doing fine for a couple weeks but now a couple of the sores have started popping back up on his face. We thought it would be fine since Otie's food is hypoallergenic and has such limited ingredients but I guess not. Hopefully the sores will go away without antibiotics since we caught it early .

Pug allergies!

Both Otis and Allie have suffered from allergies to one extent or another. Otis's allergies are more mild, he gets ear infections which I'm told are a secondary infection most likely resulting from a food allergy. Right now I have him eating Natural Balance hypoallergenic duck and potato food. I'm also very careful not to get his head wet when he takes a bath.

Allie is much worse off... A couple months after I got him he started getting little pink bumps on his muzzle and was prone to getting infections in his face wrinkle. I was told by a few people that they were normal "puppy pimples" and not to be too worried about them. But as time went on they didn't seem to get any better. I ended up bringing him to the vet who said it was an allergic reaction and that the bumps were infections in his hair folicals from the allergy and to try switching foods to a hypoallergenic food and told me to take away all treats and all toys :( this was TERRIBLE as he is an avid chewer. They told me it could be anything from a food allergy to plastic to the glaze in his food dish, or just environmental allergies.
So I changed the food dish, food, my detergent, got rid or all household cleaners and started using vinegar and baking soda to clean everything, took away all toys and washed everything in hot water to kill dust mites and gave him benadryl, NOTHING WORKED! The only time his allergies would go away was when he was on antibiotics, but a few weeks after the antibiotics were done he would get his allergies back.
We hated putting him on antibiotics and every time his allergies came back they were worse, we tried treating it more naturally using aloe and echinacea and many other things even switching foods to a non-allergenic diet, but either because the infections in his face were too bad or because we didn't have the right combo of things it never made his face clear up.
Finally we took him to an pet allergy specialist who gave him an allergy test and we found out that his allergies are mostly environmental and that he is allergic to EVERYTHING bugs, trees, weeds, wool, feathers, dust you name it he's allergic to it.
Now we are giving him allergy shots which are low doses of the things he is allergic to plus antihistamines and antibiotics to clear up his infections.
I hope this helps some people out, I know we had a hard time finding info on this type of allergic reaction.
* above is a picture of the worst infection right before we finally went to the allergist.