Our 3 year old male goldendoodle was having skin allergy issues off and on that would occasionally lead to him licking his skin raw if we didn't catch it soon and get a cone on him. Our vet prescribed one 16mg Apoquel tablet taken daily and it has really made a difference. Is there any harm in us cutting back his dose to every other day? If we do and the condition appears again we'll go back to daily administration, but it would be nice to make this medication stretch a little further if we can.

TIA

I'm NOT a vet.

Sometimes you run a risk of losing a drugs effectiveness if you lower the dosage to a degree where it causes a reaction but not a strong reaction.

It's a pretty complex biochemical interaction for something like this and I know NOTHING about this drug.

I'd straight up call your vet and ask them. They aren't getting rich selling you pills, trust me.

Not a DVM, just a guy who's spent a ton of money on Apoquel.

My 80+ lb lab gets the 16mg pill every day.... until she's really bad. She can handle 2 a day, just kind of makes her a zombie, so I try to avoid it. Even with the one pill, she's still tearing herself up some days.

You can likely give it as needed, just watch for symptoms and dose accordingly.

The 1/2 life of apoquel is only around 10-12 hours meaning that most of it is out of the dogs system in 1/2 a day. There's no harm in trying every other day but it will probably not be effective. If I was going to try cutting back, I'd probably try 1/2 tablet once a day first.

You might ask your vet about cytopoint injections. For seasonal allergies it might work just as well. It might not. Trial and error. I would not recommend apoquel eod. Maybe 1/2 tab once daily to stretch it out. Both are expensive, but safer than corticosteroids.

Dogdoc said:

---

You might ask your vet about cytopoint injections. For seasonal allergies it might work just as well. It might not. Trial and error. I would not recommend apoquel eod. Maybe 1/2 tab once daily to stretch it out. Both are expensive, but safer than corticosteroids.

---

Our golden had no change with apoquel so tried cytopoint. That stuff is magic and works quick. She takes probably 4 injections a year.