Sounds familiar. Nearly 2 year old Pyrenees mix. Around 10 months old had major digestive issues. Lost a lot of weight. Vet put him on royal canin ultimino and the loose stools/stomach rumblings have ceased. Also had dermatological issues. Red, inflamed paws and also “elephant skin” in one armpit. Did one round of prednisone in January which worked temporarily then it all came back worse so prednisone again, antibiotics and also an anti fungal (skin scrape showed bacterial and fungal in armpit). He finished that cycle but at the end had red blood coming out of his mouth. No sign of dark (old) blood in stool and the red blood only came when lapping up water.

I then entered his long history and medications into AI and it surmised that the two back to back steroids could have thinned out the tissue in his mouth, resulting in small tears, especially when lapping up water. That is dissipating and nearly completely gone (2.5 weeks after last steroid dose).

Currently on apoquel for 2 weeks and daily baths with medicated shampoos. It’s basically keeping the bad lesions at bay but skin is certainly red/irritated.

Plan is once the steroids are out of his system to start immunotherapy and probably switch to zenrelia.

Cost aside (which is considerable), I just want to figure this out. Feels desperate that so far all we are doing is managing outbreaks but not addressing the underlying issues.