very day, itchy dogs shuffle into Elizabeth Falk’s veterinary office. Some can’t stop chewing their feet or scratching their bellies. Others have red, smelly ears, or rashes on their skin. All are intensely uncomfortable because of environmental allergies. “They’re sitting in the waiting room, and everyone else is backing away out of fear that it’s contagious,” she says. “It’s super busy helping as many as we can.
Meanwhile, dogs who live in a household with other dogs also appear to benefit from a protective effect. But that doesn't necessarily mean you need to adopt another dog—or try to expose your pet to more germs. It’s difficult to tease apart all the genetic and environmental factors that contribute to allergies, Levinson says. There’s simply “too much variation between the individual dogs, and so much that’s subjective,” he says, making wholesale recommendations tricky.
A few years later, in 2016, another treatment option came on the scene: Cytopoint, a targeted therapy that’s administered via injection every four to eight weeks. It’s a monoclonal antibody to an itch signal called interleukin -31, Falk explains. “It binds to that itch signal,” she says. “It doesn’t affect the rest of the immune system in any way, which makes it very safe.