Does My Dog Have Food Allergies?
Do you think your dog has food allergies? Before you go down the long road to find the right dog food for dogs with allergies, think about your dog’s symptoms. Are they seasonal? Do they coincide with pollen or flea outbreaks? Dog itchy skin is an allergy symptom of more than just food. If your dog’s allergy symptoms include vomiting or diarrhea, then a food allergy is way up on the list.
If your dog is only dealing with itchy skin and constant scratching, and it is not flea or mange related, you may want to try adding a coat supplement to his food. Many times your dog’s itchy skin and scratching is because the current dog food is not nutritionally sufficient for him. An added supplement for healthy skin and coat can do wonders to ease and eliminate that aggravating scratching.
The healthiest dog food in the world won’t help your dog if it has something in it that your dog is allergic to. Finding the right dog food for dogs with allergies is very difficult because finding the allergic ingredient can be a very long and tedious process.
How do you know what food your dog is allergic to? It is simply a process of elimination. 
Elimination Diet
It is best to start with the most common ingredients that tend to cause allergic food reactions in dogs – grains (wheat, barley, corn, soy and rye), dairy (milk, cheese, whey, casein, etc), and artificial preservatives and colors. Corn, wheat, and soy tend to be the biggest offenders, as well as dairy, and on the protein side, beef.
Cut out your current dog food ingredient label so you know what he has been eating and keep it handy. Then go to the store (or you may have more choices looking online) and find a brand labeled to help with allergies – these tend to show that they are made with rice, or oats. Look at the ingredient label and make sure that it is different from your current brand and that it contains no corn, wheat, or soy. It is best if you can find a dog food that has the fewest ingredients. Also make sure all preservatives are natural (vitamin E/tocopherols or vitamin C/ascorbic acid).
Buy a small bag of this new dog food and feed it to your dog. NOTE: If your dog has a sensitive stomach, sometimes changing a dog food can cause diarrhea or constipation for a few days. If you do not want to chance this, you could gradually mix in the new dog food with the old, but realize that this will prolong the allergy and the elimination diet. Take notes if you see any improvements, especially focusing on the skin and ear issues for your dog’s food allergy. If no improvements are seen after two weeks on only the new food, add these ingredients to your list of possible problems. You need to just keep trying different foods with different ingredients until you see an improvement.
If your dog is in really bad shape and just miserable – or you just don’t want to go through different types of commercial dog food, you might want to try making your own healthy dog food. You’ll need to find out a bit about what quantities of proteins/carbs/fat/vitamins/minerals you need to feed (canine nutrition) your dog. After you figure that out, you can control the ingredients that he eats. It would be best to start with meat (with fat) and serve with cooked brown rice or oatmeal, and any supplemental vitamins needed. Serve this for two weeks and take daily notes as to whether this helps his condition or not. If his condition improves, you can add or change one ingredient and serve for a week, again noting whether his condition gets better or worse.
After a couple of months you should have a list of foods he is or isn’t allergic to. If you want to go back to commercial dog food, use this list and compare it with the ingredient list on different dog foods (refer to What Exactly Are Premium Dog Foods for more information on ingredients).
RSS Subscribe