Dogergies

Does your dog suffer from seasonal allergies? 

Well this girl right here, has a dog that is so itchy it's driving me crazy. I was living in College Station when I first for Lexi and when she turned a year I had noticed little dandruff like stuff on her fur. So there I go, to the vet since I freak out about any little thing that happens to her. The vet had told me he has seen a lot of dogs with that problem since the weather was so dry. I was able to control it with some medicated shampoo. Bam, seemed like magic, right! No...


Fast-forward a year later and we are living in The Woodlands and I notice she started itching again. She would scratch under her neck so much that I noticed she started bleeding. I know, gross right?! So there I go again, making a trip to the vet. He tells me she has seasonal allergies and the weather doesn't help. He recommended I start putting fish oil pills in her food and also prescribed some steroid pills to help control it. 


Well that worked for a while, but I didn't want to keep her on them for too long since they can have negative effects on her kidneys. So I took her off of them when I noticed she was fine again and also changed her food. Hurry, I finally started seeing some improvement. 


It started again this summer and I still had some medications left. I started giving her that as well as switching her food to a salmon flavored food that was all natural. (It makes her breath smell pretty bad, gross I know!) Long story short, we were out of town and what do you know! Another trip to the vet, Lexi ended up having a urine infection. The vet said it could have been a side effect from the steroids. So we are no longer giving her those since this happened. She seemed to have been doing fine in the summer and now the itching has started again.


I'm in need of some suggestions/recommendations. 
I just don't want to put her back on medication again because of the horrible side effects. I just don't like seeing her itching all the time because of this. The vet did say he could refer me to a dog dermatologist but he warned me that it was pretty pricey. 


Sorry for the lengthy post, I just had to get this out and see if I could get some recommendations from some bloggers out there! :)