Your dog is itching like crazy and shaking his head consistently. Your vet just told you it could be a food allergy. What does that mean? To learn, we talked to Susan Wynn, an internationally identified expert on holistic pet care. Wynn is former president of the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association, a clinical resident in nutrition at the University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine and author of four textbooks on integrative practice, focusing on dietary supplements which include nutraceuticals and herbs.
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| Caring For a Dog With Food Allergies |
Q: How prevalent are food allergies in dogs?
A: Ten percent of all allergy cases in dogs are food allergies. Dogs also can suffer from food intolerance, which is unique from a food allergy.
Q: What are the frequent signs of a food allergy?
A: Anything from chronic ear inflammation, gastrointestinal issues, and chronic diarrhea to chronic gas, licking their feet, or an itchy rear end.
Q: What are the most frequent issues that could trigger a food allergy in my dog?
A: It’s a genetic predicament, and when it is triggered, it is by exposure to whatever they’re allergic to. The most frequent allergens are beef, dairy, wheat, egg, chicken, lamb, soy, pork, rabbit, and fish. And, most dogs are usually allergic to more than one thing.
Q: What causes these allergies?
A: It’s a multi-factorial thing, but definitely you need to have a genetic predisposition to develop allergies. The environment can affect it, too.
There’s plenty of investigation going on proper now to decide what, in early puppyhood or early kittenhood, makes the immune method extra likely to express that trait. There’s an immune education process happening within the first couple of weeks of life. Young animals treated with antibiotics could potentially be predisposed to complications later in life simply because antibiotics change the environment inside the gut, which will be the largest immune organ within the body. That could be a predisposing trigger, but then the trigger would be becoming exposed to the allergen.
Q: Are some breeds far more prone to food allergies?
A: You will find some, but I believe it depends on whom you talk to. It also can vary by country or part of the country. It may perhaps be as simple as what breeders, with their line-bred family of animals, are in your location. So for those who have a really prominent breeder who's breeding a line identified for their allergies, you are going to think that breed typically has food allergies. In my experience, retrievers, German shepherds. Dachshunds, cocker spaniels, and rex cats are one of the most typically affected breeds.
Q: How do I decide if my dog has food allergies, or some thing else is causing the difficulty?
A: There’s only 1 method to diagnose food allergies accurately, and which is an elimination diet and challenge. So what we do is take the dog off all the foods it's consuming and we put him on a food that he's never had just before. With all the exotic diets out there now, this could be fairly tricky. I've sent persons out for alligator and yak. When the dog has improved, we commence reintroducing the old foods that we believe caused the issues within the 1st place. If he has a reaction, which usually takes a couple of days to a number of weeks, then we know he has a food allergy
There’s specific testing to rule out other problems as well. For example, you may take a sample of discharge from the ears to see if there's a issue there, or do skin testing for environmental allergies. Blood testing is not an accurate test for any allergy.
Q: Will changing my dog’s diet trigger a food allergy?
A: If the dog has been sensitized to some thing in that diet plan it could. There’s no way of realizing if your dog has been sensitized to an ingredient, though.
Q: Can my dog suddenly develop a food allergy to some thing that he’s eaten for years with no complications? Will this keep happening?
A: That’s prevalent in food-allergic dogs. They have to be sensitized; they have to have been exposed for some time period. So, in general, they’re not going to react genuinely significantly the first time they eat it but a dog that has eaten a food for years could suddenly become allergic to that food.
If an elimination diet improves the pet’s clinical signs and the owner is able to locate two to three diets the dog can tolerate, I recommend rotating by means of them just about every two to three months. The entire point is to keep them stable for a period of months to years so you are able to ultimately do their challenge testing to identify what the dog is genuinely allergic to. If you’re definitely lucky, then you could go back to a more regular diet and not these highly-priced, exotic diets.
And if they’re young enough, food allergies at times do resolve themselves.
Q: How do I treat a dog with food allergies?
A: You could attempt to cover up the signs, but if you’ve got a disease that’s caused by what you put in your mouth every day, the most beneficial treatment would be to stop putting that in your mouth daily. I use herbs all the time, and I do think they are able to support, but not as much as avoiding what’s causing the predicament.
Q: Need to I cook for my dog, as opposed to obtain her food? What about a raw diet, will that support?
A: The upside of a cooked diet is you know precisely what’s going in it and you may control that. The disadvantage is it’s far more trouble and, sadly, a lot of people won’t do it appropriate. They will leave off supplements, they won’t follow directions, and they’ll end up giving their dog or cat an unbalanced diet.
There’s absolutely nothing magical about raw diets. Some dogs do quite nicely on them and some dogs do not do really nicely on them. The protein structure may be distinctive from that in a cooked or processed diet and that does make a difference for some dogs. But it’s not widespread enough that we should tell everybody they must try a raw diet.
Q: Is there anything I can do to maintain my puppy from developing food allergies?
A: I do not believe everyone is going to tell you that you can stop food allergies if your puppy is predisposed. My opinion is that if you supply a diet that has some selection in it, so they’re acquiring a natural rotation, you are maintaining gut wellness by doing that.
I do suggest for young puppies and kittens that persons put them on probiotics. I’m extremely concerned about the use of antibiotics in growing animals. I believe it messes up their gut balance and I feel it may make them more likely to grow to be allergic over time. So for puppies, I try to keep away from antibiotics and use probiotics up to six months to one year of age and give them a diet that’s fairly high in variety.
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