i hope that ya'll can help. i rescued Rookie when he was 10 weeks old. once we got him home we noticed that he had a red scaly rash on his belly. i immediately took him to the vet and they thought it was mange. went throught the whole process of the dipping and bathing him in special spampoo. no change. in fact, he got worse. it was like that dip dried out his skin. they also treated him for fleas but couldn't find any on him. they also thought that he may be allergic to grass or pollens (inhalents). they took a skin sample but couldn't find anything. no mites, nothing. the vet also gave me genesis spray to try to give him some relief. it was then that he began taking prednisone. it worked right away. everytime we stopped giving it to him, he would get worse again. i took him to a vet specialist and he took another skin sample but it came up clean. he recommended changing his diet to duck and potatoe. he also put him on pentoxifylline er, ketoconazole and clindamycin. he wanted to get him off the prednisone but nothing else seemed to work. i felt so sorry for the little guy. he was biting his feet and legs so hard that he would literally pull his hair out and his skin was beet red. i just wanted him to feel better. he is a puppy and he should be able to play in the grass. i started researching all of this myself via the internet and found Atopica. it sounded like this might be a solution to the prednisone. anyway i called the vet specialist and asked him if he would prescribe that and he agreed but stressed that it was very exprensive. i didn't care how much it was going to cost, i just wanted to make Rookie feel better. it has been a month now and he is still biting and chewing some. definiately not as bad as before. when he is outside for a long time, it gets worse. can anyone suggest anything else? is there something that i overlooked? thank you