Medicine, prednisone, side effects, and dog personalities

Earlier in the year, I posted about giving my dog Prednisone to control her itching. While I still believe that medication can be worth the risk, I am no longer giving my dog this particular medication unless there is no other choice. We are currently undergoing a food trial by feeding her only hypoallergenic food made of fish and potatoes. She only gets fish treats. We started a round of prednisone at a high dose to stop the itching and allow the wounds to heal and the antibiotic to heal the small infection that was starting on her skin. The plan was to taper off the predinisone dose over a month while feeding this special food, continue with the special food, and see how she does. Oh, and a note, I also applied K9 Advantix to prevent fleas, ticks, and mosquito bites because I know my backyard has mosquitoes (in the south in the summer, always mosquitoes). After tapering down to one 5 mg pill a day, she is itching, scratching, licking again. It's been 3 weeks on the special food so I'll give it a few more (even though that stuff is expensive) to give time for any allergens to be completely expelled from her body. However, at this point, I just don't know what to do or what the problem could be. My vet tries very hard to help but I think he is a bit stumped, too. I am afraid it is non-specific inhalant allergies, but the vet says she should be licking her paws and rubbing her face, which she does not. The poor little dog is miserable, her licking and scratching drives me NUTS, and I'm afraid it's getting worse. I know her skin is dry and I bathe her in special shampoo, but that doesn't seem to help. Anyone with any inspiration????
Anyway, the point of this post was that my sweet little golden retriever mix has become a different dog. She has always been afraid that she wouldn't have enough to eat due to her early life as a stray. Now she steals food from her doggie siblings, causes fights with her doggie brother over food, and is generally a pain in the butt about food. She's generally very submissive, definitely the omega of the pack, but is now fighting for her chewy bone. In general, she follows my commands and does as I ask, but lately, especially if food is involved, she completely ignores me. I know all of this is due to the medication. I am just waiting for the day that the prednisone is out of her system and she is back to being my sweet little girl again. Anyone giving their dog prednisone should be aware that it is a steroid and will change a dog's personality. It makes them more intense and can cause them to fight. A dog on this medication should not be left alone with other dogs, especially if food is involved.
If we ever figure out what the cause of the scratching and itching is, I'll post it.

Siberian Huskies

As I have mentioned, I work in dog rescue. I happen to work with Golden Retriever and German Shepherd rescues, but my favorite dog breed is Siberian Husky. I have a Siberian who is, hands down, the smartest dog who ever lived. She has logic and reason beyond anything I've ever seen another dog do. When I tell people the things she does, they don't believe me. For example, if another dog has a toy that my Siberian wants, she doesn't try to take it from them because she knows the alpha (me) does not allow that. So she will go get another toy and make it seem like the most interesting, best toy in the world. When the other dog comes to investigate this new, interesting toy, my Siberian goes and takes the toy the other dog has now left. See the reasoning? She also recognizes that a phone call often means someone is about to arrive. When I was in school, my mom would keep her in the evenings. I would call when I was on my way to get her. When the phone rang, she would go sit by the door because she knew that meant I would be there soon. Is that conditioning? Yes and no. Yes, the phone would often ring before my arrival, but not every time the phone rang did someone arrive. She only went to the door when it was me on my way to get her. Somehow she figured out the difference.
Anyway, I began this rant to say that Siberian Huskies, true breed Siberian Huskies, are wonderful, smart, beautiful, playful, happy dogs. They are not mean or attack dogs or any of the other crap stupid people would have you believe. People call anything fluffy a "husky mix". NO, it is NOT. There are numerous fluffy dogs, like Chow Chows or Chesapeake Bay Retrievers, that could be involved in that mix. People also mistakenly think blue eyes means the dog is part husky, also NOT true. Other dog breeds, such as Great Danes and Australian Shepherds, can have blue eyes. The dog could be just as well mixed with those breeds. I just looked on Petfinder, a great place to find a new pet, and found the first page of Huskies only had two actual Huskies on it. The others were about 20% actual Husky mixes and the rest were absolutely not but people listed them that way. This is what makes me so angry about breed legislation and breed banning and the idiotic breed bite list. People will say they got bit by a Husky when it could have been a Chow or any other mix. (Don't get me started on people getting bit by dogs and blaming the dog when it is 90% of the time the people's fault) My mantra is "Any dog raised wrong can be dangerous. Ban bad owners." Small dogs are actually more likely to bite you because their owners don't train them. My Siberian Husky would run away from you and hide, never bite, but people are afraid of her anyway and ask stupid questions like "will she bite". No, but I might.
So, to end this rant, in general I find that people are stupid. They don't think and just go with whatever some other stupid person said. They don't investigate for themselves and make assumptions based on very limited knowledge. In the age of computers, that is inexcusable.