expiration date 

finally, after four posts with the same title, we have now concluded that koda’s itchiness and her habit of chewing herself to bleed is an annual recurrence.

on the night before we flew to Jakarta, at 2am in the morning, we found a bleeding wound on koda stomach — a result from excessive scratching. the fur around her eyes and muzzle are falling off, again, from being scratched too much. ari and i looked at each other and said, “oh no! again?”…

while ari searched through our storage for an Elizabethan collar we bought last year (during koda’s last fits), i searched through this site to see what we did the last time it happened. then i realized that the story about koda’s bald spots are only written during the Winter months (not that we live in a four-season region…). the first one was at the end of November ‘05. the second bald spots happened about year later, on January ‘07. the third was last year, on February. hmm… so this seems to be a seasonal thing!

if you have read the third bald spot story, you probably remember our elaborate (and expensive) plan to get rid of this allergy. well, what happened was after the first 7-week medicine, her itch were gone by itself. so we never went through the skin testing, etc. we, including the vet and the allergy specialist, are all very happy and thought that koda has recovered, thanks to the 7-week medicine thing.

i guess we were wrong.

that morning, at the airport, i called the vet to make an appointment for koda and arranged the time for koda’s caretaker to take the dog to the vet. during the appointment, i made a roaming phone call to talk to the vet about the possibility of seasonal allergy and to discuss the treatment.

so now, koda is on Atopica, which she takes daily. it works pretty well in controlling the flare. she still scratches and still has a few bald (or short haired) patches from scratching and biting, but at least they don’t bleed or even wounded. i bet, she’ll go back to normal and start growing her pretty, fluffy fur again by March.