allergy dog

Joey is not very happy with me today.  I don't know if I've mentioned on here that Joey is an allergy dog.  He doesn't look like a typical allergy dog, his allergies manifest in ear infections.  We didn't know that for the longest time.  One of the vets we took him to told us he had ear mites - it looks very similar.  Dark, tarry brown, stinky gunk in the ears, and v.itchy.  But, the medication never worked.  I found a new vet clinic that knew immediately it was allergies.  They cleaned out his poor ears, even had him put under so they could really get in there.  Rounds and rounds of antibiotics, ear washes and then one day I found a giant lump on his ear flap.  It was a hematoma from him flipping his ears to itch them.  The force of the ear hitting the head when he flaps it causes little blood vessels along either side of the cartilage layer to break which makes the blood pool up.  Two surgeries and a draining later!!!!  He was such a super trooper.

I did allergy testing that showed that he is allergies to lamb, duck, turkey, salmon, rice, peas, corn and then also human dander and a bunch of grasses and trees and stuff.  Basically mostly all the ingredients in dog food, he is allergic to it.  I put him on hypoallergenic dog food which is so expensive $85 a bag!  It *kind of* helps.  His poor ears just itch him all the time.  I clean them out and q tip around.

Since the hypoallergenic food only sort of helps I thought I'd try one that only had one allergen listed.  Peas.  And now I can hear fluid in the one ear and there's a tiny hematoma.  So, I gave him some antibiotics this morning, cleaned out the ears really well and stuck the CONE on him.  The cone helps stop the force of the ear flapping.  He's back to his regular food, he only had that other food for a few days.  But he's not too happy about it.  He's been laying on the kitchen floor ever since.  

Oh and don't mind all the throw rugs strewn around the kitchen.  Those are to help Rocky, my other dog, keep some traction.  He's got arthritis and I think has lost some strength to grip on the linoleum.  The rugs help but they get thrown all around.  

P.S. doesn't Joey kind of look like a chunk in that picture?  LOL he acts like I starve him but clearly I don't!