Question on prednisone

Question
Greetings,
I am a pet sitter and I will be watching a dog suffering from pano for a couple of weeks in the owner's home. This dog has flare ups every now and then. The owner will be leaving me some tramadol and prednisone and asked me to use my best judgement  and give as needed. I am OK giving the tramadol as needed for pain, but am worried about the pred, not sure how you give it as needed as I always followed directions on the bottle. I know it needs to be tapered off gradually. The owner said the vet told him it can be tapered up and tapered down as needed. I am not sure about the tapered up part. I usually have no problems giving meds to dogs per the label's directions, but not too sure on how to give pred as needed. Can you provide me some advice? Thanks!

Answer
Well pred isn't something you mess with, so you are correct to give "as directed" on the bottle.
If the dog needs 20 mg to start, then you give that twice a day for two or more days, then start tapering it down after two or three days. I don't know about tapering it UP however. It's usually a "blast" at the start then tapered off slowly over a week or so.

The only way I can see to taper up is if the dog is on a maintenance dose of say, 10 mg a day, or every other day, then he gets worse or is in more pain. In that case you would taper UP to 15 mg a day, then after a day or so give 20 etc.

But as I said, usually it's a blast to take down the pain/inflammation, then slowly tapered off.