Nothing To Sneeze At – Havanese Care for Allergies

Allergies effecting your Havanese can greatly impact on your dog's quality of life. In order to lessen the suffering time for allergies or any other serious aspect of Havanese care, you need to choose a vet for your Havanese before your dog gets ill. You need a regular vet and an emergency vet for when your regular vet is not available. You won't have much choice with an emergency vet, but you can choose your regular vet.

The vet's office should be temperature controlled, clean and have someone like a vet technician or receptionist to help and supervise. All animals in the waiting room should be constrained in some way - either on a lead or in a carrier. You also need to know how to get to your vet's office before you have to deal with a sick dog. Many vets now have extensive web pages to answer your questions about how much Havanese care they know.

Vets clinics are opening more and more in large chain pet stores, so if you don't get along with your local vet, perhaps you can check one of the clinics out. Your vet and you need to get along to provide the best Havanese care possible. You need to be able to listen to them and they need to answer your questions to your satisfaction. Vets need to be professional in manners to you, but they will never give you preferential treatment over any other client (or they shouldn't, anyway!) Vets today should always be willing to help you find alternative therapies for your dog when you ask.

Havanese, fortunately, have not shown signs of being more prone to allergies than other breeds of dog. When they get allergies, they get allergies most common in all dogs - skin allergies, food allergies or allergies to medicines. Just as it can be a long time of trial and error to determine just what a person can be allergic to, it takes an equally long time to determine what your Havanese is allergic to.
If your Havanese starts scratching so bad they bleed or leave red
, hairless spots, your dog probably is suffering from an allergy that can affect Havanese, which can affect other dogs, too. Havanese allergies are usually never contagious wither to humans or to other dogs. Your dog is most likely allergic to some sort of plant, a food ingredient or a chemical in laundry detergent or shampoos.

Your vet should be especially concerned about your Havanese' care. He or she will want to know about everything that touches your dog - where he plays, what plants are in where he plays, what medications are given and if he eats any of his toys. The vet will most likely do a skin scrape and send it to a lab to help with allergy diagnosis. The vet may also ask you to put your Havanese on a bland diet of chicken and rice in order to determine if the dog has a food allergy.


Fiona Kelly has written numerous articles on his/her favorite subject - dogs, including Havanese information, Havanese care and Havanese allergies. The information compiled here comes from interviews of many vets on the subjects of Havanese care and dog allergies. This author is currently writing a new series of articles on rare breedsin general including how to choose a vet for your Havanese and canine allergies.