Dogs and Food Allergies
Like us, dogs can have allergies too, but usually to things like flea bites and atopy, which means inhalant allergies. After that come food allergies, something many of us may be familiar with. However, there is an important distinction to be made between food allergies and food intolerance’s.
Recurring yeast infections may be another symptom. Sometimes, dogs with food allergies will defecate twice as much, or more than usual, which is normally around 1-2 times a day. With dogs, some typical foods might include dairy, eggs, poultry, beef, soy and soy protein, and sometimes even corn. These products are commonly found in dog food products, which can make it difficult to identify and isolate the trigger of the allergy.
If you start to notice an improvement in the dog, try giving the dog the old food again. There is a lamb and rice variety of dog food on the market targeted towards allergies, but it’s not recommended. It is quite a lot of work to prepare the food yourself, but most dog owners would agree that their dog is worth it!
Your Dog and Food Allergies
The trend towards natural and organic food is helping these dogs eat a safe nutritious diet. The next step up is grain allergies. These dogs can eat no grain at all. Most commercial dog foods do contain some grains, corn, wheat, barley being the most prevalent. Recently some companies have started manufacturing grain free foods.
Dogs do like fish. If food allergies to meat are present in your dog, remember to read the labels closely. It consists of bones and raw food. There is so much talk about not feeding dogs bones. If your dog is not allergic to the meat the bone came from he can eat the bone RAW. Raw bones do not splinter as easily as cooked bones. Be careful with your dogs and small bones of any kind. Diarrhea, vomiting and other symptoms can present with these food allergies.
The ingredient labels on dog food works the same as it does on human food.
