The whole dog allergy thing

I don’t know how I became allergic to the canine species. It just kind of happened. I grew up with dogs. The first one was named Chip. I named him after my brother’s best friend. It seemed like the cool 4 year old thing to do at the time. Chip was a small, very scruffy black dog. A dog that I remember had a lot of ticks for some reason. We lived in Houston at that time and I guess ticks (not the deer ones) were just more prevalent. Then came Coco. We got her when I was in Junior High. We only had her for 5 months. She was hit by a car on Easter Sunday and died of injuries. She was a beautiful dog. A chocolate lab that loved to swim in the creek across the road. It was a shame and it took me forever to get over that dog dying. Next was Abby and then Callie. We acquired Abby from our neighbors and then stumbled upon Callie. They were frick and frack and ended up moving to South Carolina with my parents in 1997. They both were mutts. Abby was some type of healer crossed with who knows what. She was a black dog. And Callie was some type of Golden Retriever. They passed away a few years ago. Matt had a dog named Brisbee while I was in college. It was a Beagle. And the damn Beagle liked to run and howl! I can’t tell you how many times that dog showed up in the pound, at my mother-in-law’s, on the campus of Plattsburgh State…I could go on and on. We ended up giving him to a friend of Matt’s sister’s in Troy when he moved down here in 1998. Shortly after we bought our house, we adopted a dog from the SPCA. His name was Rex and he had some American Staffordshire in him. We worked with that dog for months and could not get him trained. He was an out of control maniac! We ended up giving him back to the shelter. Then we got Patsy and the love affair began with Saint Bernards.

The spring of 2005 was not a pleasant one for me. That is when all my allergies started to surface. I really do think that pregnancy changes your chemical makeup. I really didn’t have too many problems with allergies until I had Brenna. My doctor treated me the best she could and we really didn’t think it was so bad to go to an allergist. Then in 2006, I kept getting hives. I would get them on my neck and on my eyelids. There were some days when I would wake up with one eye swollen shut or beet red. I couldn’t figure it out for the life of me. I hadn’t changed detergent or anything like that. Then I noticed that when I would help Matt wash the dogs, my hands would break out terrible and they would burn horribly. Again, didn’t really chalk it up to anything other than dermatitis, which I knew I had.

So, I quit all my meds and made an appointment on January 31, 2007 to see an allergist. I had no clue what allergy testing really was, until then. They did the whole shabang on my forearms with just a prick of each allergen. The trees started popping up, specifically mulberry and birch. Whatever comes back negative on the forearms, they do a deeper shot on your upper arms. I swear, as soon as she did the dog, it was puffed up! I was shocked, to say the least. How could that be? Not me, no way!

So the doctor asked me what type of dogs we have. I told him. And his response, “Yeah, well, you’re screwed. Allergens are in the saliva and dander.” Yup, screwed. He didn’t advise to get rid of them. He advised me to get them out of the house as much as possible. And he also said that A/C in the summertime with the windows shut would help with the tree pollen. Yeah, okay. No central air here. So that’s how I’m on the Zyrtec/Singulair/Astelin/Optivar combo for my allergies, year round, I might add.

So I got to thinking about those hives. My alarm clock? Luci sticking her head across my neck in the morning to get me up. Then she’ll snort a little on my face, as if her twenty pound noggin ain’t gonna get me up! This is the dog who normally sleeps next to me every night. I still let her, sometimes, especially in the winter. I’m very passive-aggressive though. I’ll throw the down comforter on top of her so she doesn’t stay too long. It’s horrible, but much easier than trying to get a 175 pound dog off the bed that’s snoring!

And on a side note, if I could stay pregnant the rest of my life, I would not be prone to these allergies. During both my pregnancies I did not exhibit hardly any signs of being allergic to trees or dogs. In fact, this past season was by far my worst, which proves my theory about pregnancy changing the chemical makeup of women’s bodies. Do you think I actually want to be pregnant for the rest of my life? Over my dead body!