Your pet must be off all medications for a designated amount of time before the Allergy testing can be done.

First, blood will be drawn. There are 2 reasons to why we pull blood:

     One: to make sure your pet is healthy enough to under go the sedation and

     Two: A small amount of blood will be sent to a lab in order to find out what things your pet is allergic to.

Angelcare Animal hospital offers Intradermal Skin Testing (allergy skin test). The process involves injecting a small amount of different allergens (pollen, dust, cat dander etc.) under the animals skin. After a few minutes your pets body will start to have a allergic reaction to the different allergens. Using a scale of 0-4 each injection site is ranked on the bodies reaction to those particular allergens.

Your pet will recieve another injection to help calm their immune response. This helps them not have to itch.

After getting the results back from the lab, we cross check the intradermal skin test to find out the top 10 things your pet is allergic to.

Using these 2 tests Angelcare can then mix a proper allergy "vaccine" for your pet.

Dr. Limpach or other staff members will show you how to inject your pet and the rules and guidelines of the Allergy "vaccine."

This is a process of your pet's body building up an immunity to the things that it is allergic to. This process sometimes can take up to a year to start seeing full effects. During the time alternative measures will be taken to keep your pet itch free and comfortable while the vaccines are working. 

If a vaccine doesn't appear to be working, some tweaks and changes might have to be made in either the schedule of injections or in the dosing. 

For all other questions or concerns pertaining to Allergy testing for your pet please contact us to set up an appointment.