Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I am a retired veterinary technician and have a dog who has seasonal allergies, and food allergies. His symptoms consist mostly of scratching at his face, and chewing his feet. The food allergies have been controlled by putting him on a limited ingredient diet. The seasonal allergies usually started up in April and last until November, and required antihistamines. Last spring my vet convinced me to try the prescription medication Apoquel which is an immunosuppressive. At first it seemed like magic, my dog had zero allergy symptoms. Then after being on the medication for a few months, my dog developed a histiocytoma (a benign tumor) on his lip. These are typically seen in puppies and young dogs - my dog was 4 yrs. old at the time. These usually go away on their own after a few months and that is exactly what happened - no big deal (other than a trip to the vet to confirm that it was in fact a histiocytoma and not a more aggressive tumor). Several months later, while still on Apoquel, my dog started chewing on his right front leg, up near where the leg and body meet (his front "armpit" if you will). He was also shedding like crazy - HUGE amounts of fur. He ended up with a large area of hair loss and red angry looking skin on his right front leg. He would not leave it alone. This happened after the allergy season. I bought a sleeve to keep him away from it, and took him to the vet (again). She did a skin scraping to check for bacterial infection, yeast infection, or mange which were all negative, and then suggested putting him on prednisone (another immunosuppressant) in addition to the Apoquel and Zyrtec. I told her I had been reading up on Apoquel and some of the side effects included histiocytomas and demodectic mange. I told her I was going to pull him off of the Apoquel (which needed to be done by weaning over a few weeks). She suggested I could try a dose of Bravecto which is used for fleas and ticks, but also is very effective in treating demodectic mange mites just in case the negative scraping was due to a low population of mites. Within a week of getting him off of the Apoquel and using the Bravecto his skin calmed down, and at that time I noticed that his entire coat was thinning - more noticeably on his right side. Once he was off of that nasty drug it took a few months for his fur to grow back. This year before allergy season started, I decided to read up on supplements for allergies. I chose Zesty Paws because of all of the good reviews, and the company's reputation. I started giving them to my dog in March and now well into allergy season have not seen ANY of his usual allergy symptoms. Also, his coat looks beautiful again!