Steroids help to relieve allergy symptoms. Contact allergies are due to contact with chemicals or materials like insecticides, soaps, carpets, paint, grass pollen and others. You have to identify and as far as possible, remove the allergen or avoid contact with that allergen to safeguard your pet's health. Your vet will treat the lesions and itches. Food allergy is the result of a reaction to an ingredient in the pet food.
Clinical signs are skin diseases and digestive system disorders.
You need your vet to do a physical check up of your pet to try to determine the cause. Changing pet foods does not solve the problem as many pet foods contain similar ingredients. To test for food allergy, the elimination trial diet is used. Your vet can recommend a special diet to test for allergy to food ingredients. If the symptoms remain after an elimination-feeding diet, then the allergy is not due to food.