expiration date 

the picture above was taken right after the little girl in a yellow dress laughed out loud at koda and said, “HA HA HA HA! look mom, that dog is wearing something on its head!!”… the dog looked back at us, confused.

koda has been wearing her cone-of-death (that’s how she refers her e-collar) for the past four days. her right eye is swollen and bleeding. there are a few bald spots on her legs and her stitches mark from spaying done 4 years ago is very red. basically, her allergy has flared up in a full force within the past 4 days.

what happened?

well, some of you probably remember that in August, we started the Atopica early. it went very well, and her bald spots disappeared within a week after taking the medicine. as the doctor recommended, after 7 weeks of daily dose, we reduced it to once-every-two-days. it still went well… we were very happy and felt like we have conquered the allergy.

after another 7 weeks of reduced dose, we decided to reduce it again to one tablet every 3 days. well, it makes sense right? reduce the dose every 7 days…

what we forgot is that koda’s allergy peak happens on end of November to December. and we reduced the dose at the end of November… oops.

after a week of the 2nd reduced dose, koda started to scratch and bit on her front legs. the back knees began to lose some fur. we immediately upped the dose back to once-every-two-days.

another week went by, and the scratching got worse… we then gave her the full daily dose again. maybe it was too late, but by then, koda’s right eye had already swollen and her tummy was full of red spots. she scratched everything like crazy…

so, she has to wear her nemesis, the cone of death, again. poor girl, on the first day, she couldn’t even navigate out of the dining table because her head is now four times as wide as it was.

these days, aina keeps saying “aww, poor koda” and tries to cheer koda up. she gives her treats and bones. she pats the dog’s head more often than usual, and lately, she’s been letting the dog lick her. and tonight, when koda looked really sad (we had to put the cone back on after a half an hour break), aina tried to cheer her up by imitating the sad dog, “i’ll lay down next to you, koda! don’t be sad!”