Your Dog and Food Allergies

Ensuring your pet stays happy and healthy is the most important job to any pet owner. PetproBio is a natural prebiotic supplement for your pet’s overall health and wellbeing. We have teamed up with the lovely Jane Howe – Freelance pet care writer. Below she explains dog food allergies and how natural remedies can help.

Food allergies – what exactly are they?

Food allergies in dogs are when the body’s immune system goes a little over the top in response to a harmless trigger food, such as beef or wheat. This usually results in skin disease, gastrointestinal upsets such as vomiting and diarrhoea, or both. Unfortunately, once the allergy has started and the immune system has become ‘primed’, nothing but complete avoidance of the trigger foods will alleviate the symptoms.

What to do if your dog has an allergy

The first thing is to rule out other causes, as lots of much more common conditions can lead to pruritus (itching) or tummy upsets. A quick trip to your local vet’s office to make sure nothing else is going on is a good starting point. After this, the next step is usually a food trial. This involves feeding your dog a diet consisting completely of foods that they have never experienced before, such as duck and tapioca or bison and sweet potato, known as an exclusion diet. If your dog has never eaten these foods before it cannot mount an immune response to them. These diets can be home cooked or purchased from your vet or pet store. Alternatively, feeding a hydrolyzed diet where the particles are too small to trigger an allergy can also help. Studies have shown that a complete diagnosis can only be made if the symptoms resolve whilst on the food trial, but return if the original trigger food is reintroduced to the diet.

Food allergies in our dogs are not that common, but if your pet is one of the unfortunate ones it will mean feeding them a special diet for the rest of their life. This means all their food needs to be free from triggers, including snacks. Fortunately, you can still give your doggy treats, you just need to put in a little extra effort to make them. If you stick to the new foods properly you should find that your dog’s health improves significantly.

Can Natural Remedies Help With Food Allergies?

Having a dog with food allergies can be extremely frustrating to deal with for everyone involved. Dry, itchy skin, rashes, constant ear infections and tummy upsets are just some of the possible symptoms of an allergy. It can be very upsetting to see your beloved pet uncomfortable and poorly all the time. While the actual problem will usually require a trip to your veterinarian and careful dietary control, owners can do a lot to reduce the stress levels that often go hand-in-hand with allergic conditions.

PetproBio can be used on a daily basis as a way to prevent health related problems with your pet. The probiotic benefits can be used to help aid food intolerances and settle diarrhoea and bowel trouble.

Blog Credit: Mary-Jane Howe, Freelance Writer