For sure. We have dogs that I would notice in their chart that every September, they come in. And that's because we're going to have certain things bloom or pollinate during that time of year. And so that dog might be highly allergic to that thing. And I always tell people your dog may be allergic to numerous things. And as long as they stay in low amounts in the environment, it's not a problem. But as they increase, you're going to start to see symptoms. And as they decrease, the symptoms will begin to go away. And what we're going to do is we're going to help that dog during that peak time when they're having issues in the season with topical therapies and oral medications, making sure that we have the infections under control. And for those reasons, you do need to work with your veterinarian to make sure you're on the best treatment plan, so your dog can feel comfortable and you can all sleep well at night.

The only way to test for a food allergy is to do an elimination diet trial. You can home cook food, which is probably the purest form of doing that. And we would help you to formulate a diet. We also use a couple of effective commercial diets. The most crucial thing is when we do a food trial, you cannot feed anything else because that could contaminate and ruin our results. We generally would put a dog on a diet for a minimum of six weeks. And if we see the symptoms get much better, that's great. Unfortunately, many dogs that have food allergies also have other allergies, so it may be a combination of things. In general, though, a food allergy is a smaller component of what most dogs experience, but it can be a very significant one for those that have it.

Contact allergies refer to the primary allergies that dogs have when they're walking around or laying down in your house. Some dogs are allergic to house dust mites, and they're everywhere. No matter how clean your home is, you have house dust mites. And you probably have some mold there too. So the dog is exposed to them on their skin, and the antigens of these substances penetrate through the skin, and the dog's body creates what is essentially an over-response. And that's going to cause the histamine release, which causes the itching and discomfort for your dog.

The most common symptom in dogs is chewing on their feet, scratching at their bodies or their ears, shaking their heads, licking their rear ends, and just being miserable and unable to settle. You'll often find that they're licking their feet and scratching through the night, which means something's not right.

Unfortunately, allergies are relatively common. I would say probably up to 30 or 40% of all dogs have some form of allergies. Some are super mild. We see them on occasion. And other dogs live with them all year round. And those are the dogs we want to spend a lot of time with, making sure we're treating them with the best possible medications and topical therapies we can.