Dogs Excessive Itching with No Resolving

We adopted a dog in December that in late January started showing signs of itching, smelliness, and dandruff. We took her to the vet who said she had a yeast infection and allergies. She prescribed us a shampoo, anti-biotics, and 2 other medications supposed to help relieve the itching. She also gave our dog a steroid shot. We followed through the medications but noticed that our dog kept getting worse. She started losing hair and rubbing herself on furniture just to itch. My husband and I work full-time, with him in the military making it hard to find time to go to the vet. Also the cost of the last vet bill, made us scared to go again when the vet told us that her itching was going to stick around because she must have allergies. However, it has now spread to our other dog. The symptoms are extreme hair loss (on tail, legs, paws, around eyes), our first dog with the problem has large skin flakes coming off of her, scaly skin on tail for the first dog, musty smell that is not improved after using antibacterial and antifungal shampoo repeatedly, red areas from itching, excessive itching. The first dog with the problem has also just recently broken skin from itching and biting. We’ve tried to mitigate this issue at home using the medicated shampoo and cones to prevent from itching. We have a vet appointment scheduled in the coming weeks but would like to at least get the ball rolling in any direction.

Hello!  I wonder whether this could be sarcoptic mange?   It's definitely worth asking your vet.  Symptoms include excessive itching, worsening rather than improving with steroids, and it is infectious.   If this were to be the case, medicated shampoos etc might still be useful in order to protect the skin from secondary infection.   When you say 'in the coming weeks,' it may be worth describing the symptoms to your veterinary receptionist and asking whether your dogs can be seen much sooner than that, because the itching sounds very uncomfortable for them. Other possibilities do include allergies, fleas and so on.  Please do let us know how this story ands and - best of luck!