Lori's Dog Mom Diary

I Wish I Knew This Before All Those Vet Visits

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The pharmacist called me on a Wednesday afternoon last June. "Mrs. Brennan, are you still refilling the Temaril-P for Bailey?" I had not refilled it in eight weeks. "No," I said. "I don't think we need it anymore." There was a pause. "Bailey has been on Temaril-P for a year. Are you sure?" I was sure. But I had not done anything dramatic. I had not changed her diet. I had not found a new vet. I had not tried a new medication. I had only done one thing differently. And I had been doing it for eight weeks without knowing why. My name is Lori Brennan. I am 56. I live just outside Columbus, Ohio. And I am writing this because my mother kept something to herself for thirty years and dogs are still cycling on Temaril-P while their owners are told this is just how it will be. My mother's name was Joan. She raised fourteen dogs. Eleven of them lived past fifteen. Three lived to seventeen or eighteen. But that is not the part that matters most to me. The part that matters most is that every dog she ever had that was put on Temaril-P eventually came off it. Every single one. Her vet, Dr. Haskins, who treated our family's dogs for decades, said at her funeral that in forty years of practice he had never seen anything like it. "They didn't just manage," he said. "They got better. Dogs on Temaril-P don't just get better. I never knew how to explain it." I thought she was just lucky. I was wrong. Every morning for as long as I can remember my mother had a ritual. Before the kettle. Before she got dressed. Before anything. She would open the second drawer in the kitchen. She would take out a small amber bottle. She would add what she called her "morning squirt" to each dog's bowl before filling it. Clear liquid. Every dog. Every bowl. Every morning. I watched her do it for thirty years. I never asked what it was. It was just what Mom did. When she died last April I brought two things home from her house. Her recipe tin. And the amber bottle from the second kitchen drawer. Bailey is my 10-year-old Golden Retriever. She had been on allergy medication for two years when Mom died. Apoquel, then Cytopoint, then Temaril-P. Hot spots that cycled to new locations every three weeks despite the medication. The vet kept adjusting. The pharmacist kept refilling. Bailey kept cycling. I put Mom's amber bottle in my own second kitchen drawer. Every morning I opened that drawer and added a squirt to Bailey's bowl. Because it was just what Mom did. Three weeks later my neighbor Carol stopped me walking Bailey. "What have you done to her? She's not stopping to scratch anymore." Bailey had been stopping on every walk to scratch behind her ear for two years. I had stopped noticing. I could not remember the last time she had stopped. Then I realized I had not seen a new hot spot appear at the three-week mark. I went back and checked my notes. The cycling I had been tracking since this all started. The three-week pattern that had been clockwork for a year on Temaril-P. Six weeks had passed. Nothing new had opened. I picked up the amber bottle and read the label for the first time. Cold pressed liquid collagen. All three collagen types. Type I, II and III. I sat on the kitchen floor for a while. Then I started reading. Here is what I found out that nobody had told me in a year of Bailey's Temaril-P prescription. Temaril-P is trimeprazine and prednisolone. The trimeprazine suppresses the histamine signal from what gets through the skin barrier. The prednisolone suppresses the broader immune attack. Neither of them closes the barrier. And prednisolone specifically suppresses the immune system's maintenance role. The role responsible for maintaining and repairing tissue, including the structural collagen wall in the skin. Long-term prednisolone use means the wall loses its maintenance support at the same time the medication is managing the symptoms of the wall failing. Bailey had been on Temaril-P for a year. A year of the immune system's ability to maintain her barrier being partially suppressed by the medication prescribed to manage the barrier failing. The cycling had continued on Temaril-P because the Temaril-P was never going to close what it was managing. My mother had known that. She had not known it in medical terms. She had known it the way you know something you have observed over thirty years of watching dogs get better when nobody else's dogs did. The barrier needed structural collagen to rebuild from the inside every single morning. All three types. In a form that bypassed the heat that destroys most of what commercial food claims to deliver before the bag is sealed. One squirt on existing food. The wall refilling while the medication managed the current state. That is what the amber bottle was. That is what it had always been. I thought about every dog I had watched my mother put on and eventually take off medication. Pilot. On antihistamines at three. Off them at five. Lived to sixteen. Bramble. On Temaril-P at four after a severe flare. Off it at six. Lived to fifteen. Rex. The worst case I ever saw. Cycling continuously from two years old. On Temaril-P for two years. Off it at four. Lived to eighteen. Then I thought about our neighbor Mrs. Kowalski. Three dogs in thirty years. All of them on Temaril-P or Apoquel at some point. None of them ever came off it. The last one she buried at nine from a resistant secondary infection after years of chronic barrier failure the medication was managing but never closing. My mother's dogs. Mrs. Kowalski's dogs. Same street. Same vets. Same climate. Same food brands. One difference. Every morning. The second kitchen drawer. The amber bottle. The squirt. Mrs. Kowalski's dogs were managed indefinitely. My mother's were not. It was not luck. It was not the breed. It was the tank. When Mom's bottle ran out I went looking for the same thing. Cold pressed. All three types at verified doses. Not a chew. Not another bag with a skin support claim that heat processing had already compromised. Cold pressed liquid collagen with type I, II and III confirmed by independent testing before every batch shipped. One brand matched everything the label promised. Snoots. Cold pressed confirmed. Type I, II, III, V and X at 900mg. Five types, where most products stop at three. Third party tested every single batch. Zero fillers. One dropper on existing food every morning. The same thing my mother was giving from that amber bottle. In a form I could actually order reliably. Bailey is 10. The pharmacist asked if I was still refilling the Temaril-P. I have not refilled it in eight weeks. We are tapering under veterinary supervision for the first time in a year. My mother did this for thirty years and never once told Mrs. Kowalski. Never said a word when Mrs. Kowalski was at the vet adjusting doses. Never mentioned it when Rex came off Temaril-P and Rex's human equivalent two doors down stayed on it forever. I do not know why she stayed quiet. But I am not. Because Bailey came off the refill list. And your dog does not have to stay on it. One dropper. Every morning. Don't waste it. Their website only. Not Amazon. What is on Amazon is almost universally single type and heat processed. The wall cannot close on type I alone and it cannot close on a degraded form that absorbs at 20 to 30 percent regardless of what the label claims. trysnoots.com/pages/premium-liquid-collagen 🐕 EDIT. I told my friend Janet last month. Her 8-year-old Springer Spaniel has been on Temaril-P for eighteen months. She called me two weeks after starting the dropper. "Lori. The three-week mark just passed. Nothing opened." She sounded like she could not quite believe it. She had been told this was indefinite. It did not have to be. trysnoots.com/pages/premium-liquid-collagen P.S. Rex was my mother's worst case. Continuous cycling from age two. Temaril-P prescribed at two and a half. The vet said given the severity it would likely be a lifelong protocol. My mother nodded and went home and started the amber bottle the same day alongside the Temaril-P. Rex came off Temaril-P at four. He lived to eighteen. The vet at his final visit said he had never seen a dog with Rex's initial presentation age the way Rex had aged. My mother just smiled and drove home. One squirt. Every morning. For fourteen years after he came off the prescription. The barrier never ran dry. trysnoots.com/pages/premium-liquid-collagen 🐕 P.P.S. If your dog is on Temaril-P right now and you have been told this is how it will be, your vet is not wrong about the medication. Temaril-P does what it does. The prednisolone suppresses the immune attack. The trimeprazine suppresses the histamine. Both are aimed correctly at the symptom. Neither is aimed at the structural wall generating the symptom. And prednisolone suppresses the immune system's maintenance role, the same system that is supposed to maintain and repair the barrier, while it suppresses the evidence of the barrier failing. The wall needs cold pressed liquid collagen alongside the medication. Not instead of it. Alongside. The barrier starts closing. The medication starts having less to suppress. The pharmacist starts asking if you still need the refill. trysnoots.com/pages/premium-liquid-collagen 🐕 Lori Brennan, Columbus, Ohio