Does My Dog Have Dog Food Allergies?
Does your dog have dog 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? While dog itchy skin is one of the most common dog food allergies symptoms, it is also a symptom of many other dog allergies. If your dog’s allergy symptoms include vomiting or diarrhea (gastrointestinal problems), 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 kind of food for dog food allergies is very difficult because finding the allergic ingredient can be a very long and tedious process.
Dog Food Allergies: Elimination Diet
How do you know what ingredient your dog is allergic to? It is simply a process of elimination.
It is best to start with the most common dog food allergies ingredients are – 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.
If you have a special needs dog, if your dog is pregnant or nursing, or a puppy, do not try the Elimination Diet to figure out dog food allergies without veterinarian supervision, as you must ensure your dog is getting the proper nutrition for their condition/stage of life.
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.
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 dog food allergies. You need to just keep trying different foods with different ingredients until you see an improvement.
Dog Food Allergies: Alternatives to the Elimination Diet
There are two alternatives to the above elimination diet to help with your dog’s food allergies: Make your own homemade dog food or buy a hypoallergenic dog food.
Homemade Dog Food for Dog Food Allergies
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 homemade dog food as part of your dog food allergies treatment. 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 post on premium dog foods for more information on ingredients).
Hypoallergenic Dog Food for Dog Food Allergies:
These type of commercial dog foods have the allergic dog in mind. Below is a list of some of the top rated hypoallergenic dog foods.
Natural Balance Potato & Duck Dog Food Allergy Formula
Wellness Super5Mix Fish & Sweet Potato Dry Dog Food
They have very few ingredients in them. Most are also organic. What you want to look for here is few ingredients, only natural preservatives, and no colorings or flavorings. Just a very basic food. Dog food for allergies also tend to use different types of meats and grains that your dog has probably not been exposed to yet.
Dog allergies to food is becoming more and more common. And while this may seem frustrating to the pet owner, the good news is there are so many more choices for the allergic dog now than there were even just ten years ago.
The whole process of figuring out what your dog is allergic to can seem rather overwhelming, but please don’t give up! Your dog is suffering and is miserable and you need to figure out a good dog allergies treatment to help out. It took me over a month to see any improvement in my dog, but then once it started, you feel so good that you were able to help your baby with their dog food allergies!
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2 comments
Hi. I just read this article because my dog has the same exact symptoms of a food allergy. He’s on flea medication and I check him all the time but no sign of fleas on his body. So I have started doing the whole trial and error of figuring out which ingredient is causing the reaction… Just switching to a Lamb and Rice Meel… then to a Fish and Sweet Potato meal really helped… but he still has the itchies. so I am once again going back to the pet store and seeing if I can find this “hypoallerginic dog food” that you mentioned in the last part of the article… sounds like a good alternative to all the rest which cost so much $$. GOOD ARTICLE AND WELL WRITTEN!
Thank you. Two more things to think about if your dog still itches.
1) Flea medication – particularly if it is a spot-on treatment (the kind you put between the shoulder blades). I have 2 dogs, 1 has become so sensitive to them that I just can’t use it on him (the other dog no problem at all) – he itches and bites at himself for a couple of weeks when I put it on (unfortunately it took me several months to put this together). I live in the south, so aggressive flea control is a must, and he had been using it for a couple of years prior – think he just got to a certain exposure point that it started hurting him. I now use a diatomaceous earth product for flea control.
2) Supplements – this same dog as a rescue puppy had severe itching and I changed to a premium dog food and it helped quite a bit (about 80%), but not complete. I had to add a skin/coat supplement to the food – seems he just needed extra nutrients. I kept him on that for several months, and finally the itching (except for the normal scratch here and there) went away.
It’s so hard to really pinpoint the causes. It is also rather discouraging because it can take around 6 weeks to know if you are having any affect or not. Just try to keep in mind anything that can affect your dog’s immune system (such as getting rid of pesticides or adding supplements or changing dog food) and how to strengthen it. Good luck.
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