Wednesday 9 November 2011

Food Allergies in Dogs!!



Star is now 3 yrs and 6 months old, she has always suffered with pink looking skin - but over the last few months it has got much much worse we took her to the vets and they said she had a skin infection on her back legs where she'd been nibbling the skin - she was put on antibiotics and steroids and it cleared up lovely, her skin in general looked so much better and she had completely stopped scratching and biting herself - but then as we reduced the steroids the scratching and biting started again and her skin looked so terribly sore, she just couldn't settle down at night - we decided that enough was enough and took her back to the vets who asked if we had considered Allergies and did we want to get her tested - using the allergy test "The York Test," we wanted to get to the bottom of this so we agreed and went ahead, the vet did the test there and then took the blood and filled in the form then off it was sent with the results guaranteed to be back within 2 weeks - in the meantime we just kept everything normal.

On Monday evening we recieved a phonecall from the vet she had the results already - it had only been a week!

The results show that Star has No allergies to anything in the environment either indoor or outdoor But she does have several FOOD allergies

These are - Chicken, Turkey, Duck, Lamb, Beef, Potato, Oats, Corn/Maize and Cows milk

So then came the fun of searching foods that were going to be ok for her - after hours of looking at dog food ingredients online - theres is only ONE diet in the UK suitable (apart from prescription diet) and that is James Wellbeloved Ocean White Fish and Rice - obviously the same will have to apply to the treats that she has, luckily Fish4dogs treats are 100% fish - But we have to be strict and exclude all of those ingredients from her diet to enable her skin to heal - another symptom was her skin always smelt very cheesey another symptom of an allergy I now know, but until you are aware of allergies and their effects its difficult to know what is wrong.
We are so glad that we went ahead with the test as now we have the answers, we know what has to be avoided to help star enjoy life.