Just as allergies in humans manifest themselves as rash or sneezes, your dog’s allergies can show up as itchiness, or even an ear infection. If your dog’s allergic to his food, you’ll find that he’s always scratching himself, even if it’s obvious that he isn’t infected by ticks or fleas. The tricky part about dog allergies is that they don’t go away with medication, so the best thing you can do for your four-legged friend is to take preventive measures.
Determining Your Dog’s Allergies
Elimination Diet - To find out the exact ingredient your dog is allergic to, try doing an elimination diet. This is perhaps the most effective method, but it also takes more time–up to twelve weeks of removing specific food before you can notice any significant results. And if you haven’t found the offending ingredients by then, you’ll have to do the entire process until you do.
Switch Foods - There is an alternative to the elimination diet, and this is to give your dog a different type of dog food. Simply switching brands may not be enough to eliminate the allergies though, because many brands contain the same ingredients. What you can do is to study the ingredients of the food your dog is currently eating to figure out which protein sources he hasn’t had. Then look for a dog food brand that doesn’t contain the ingredients his current dog food has. For instance, there are many dog food brands that contain unique proteins like venison or rabbit. This is great to test for possible allergic reactions to common proteins like chicken.
Homemade Dog Food - Perhaps the quickest way you can have the upper hand to your dog’s allergies is to make give your dog homemade dog food. This way you’ll have control over what he’s eating and what he isn’t, which can be difficult to tell from reading the ingredients from a bag of commercial dog food. You can start by combining rice with lamb and baby food, as long as your dog isn’t already eating and potentially allergic to lamb meat.
It takes patience to get to the bottom of dog food allergies, especially since they don’t disappear overnight. You’ll need a lot of time and thoughtfulness to help your dog overcome this condition, but his goofy grin and the itch-free days ahead of him will make it all worthwhile.