Allergies. I’m suffering. The dog is suffering. The world is full of weeping eyes and itchy palates and sneezes. It’s the season for ragweed and shedding leaves, and I look forward to some element of frost so that I can breathe again. Pot Roast seems to be on board with this sentiment. This time of year his little thighs look like red itchy scabs, his feet are red and angry, and he’s mega itchy. With a little help from Amherst, we’ve kept this under control. But there’s a certain time of year that no matter what we do, Pot Roast struggles with the season, pollen and all the symptoms of allergies.
It’s hard when your pet has some sort of health problem that is hard to manage, much less hard to read the impact that has on their happiness. But what I’ve learned in managing my own allergies over thirty some odd years is that I do my best to avoid my allergens in an effort to stay as symptom-free as possible. Pot Roast, on the other hand, seems to want all the allergens all the time.
I acknowledge that Roastie doesn’t have the wherewithal to know what he’s allergic to, but for a dog who knows that coming in once it’s dark (and bedtime) means a bedtime treat (which he waits patiently for in his bed immediately after coming inside), it’s a mystery to me how he doesn’t get the correlation between leopard crawling through the grass and then having insanely angry-looking, itchy thighs. How does he not understand that his need to pee directly on the STOP sign—you know, the STOP sign that has about fifteen tons of ragweed growing all around it like a tree—will result in him being covered in an allergen that requires a thigh wet-wipe once we get home? And yet still he persists. He’s nothing if not determined.
For now, it seems I will have a life of aloe gel and Benadryl, for both the dog and me. But you know what they say: Misery loves company. And I love the heck outta Pot Roast.