Does your dog suffer from an intolerance or allergy. This could help.

I want to talk to you today about intolerances so that’s when a dog is intolerant to something in its diet. You’re probably aware by now as we’ve said many times before that we believe dog’s diets should be completely free of grains. Grains being things like wheat and rice, basically, any cheap filler which has very little to no nutritional value for dogs. Grains are also one of the most common intolerances in dogs but as we’ve talked about this before we’re not going to go into it too deeply here.

What we do want to talk about are protein sources and in dog food this normally means meat. Often foods will contain a mixture of different protein sources such as chicken and beef or chicken and turkey. If you think your dog may be intolerant to a protein source the easiest thing to do is what’s called an elimination diet. This is exactly what it sounds like where you eliminate as many protein sources from your dog’s diet as possible leaving only a single source. There are plenty of foods on the market which as classified as “single source”, this essentially means there’s only one type of meat in them.

One of the most common protein intolerances seems to be chicken so let’s use that as an example. For an elimination diet to be successful it needs to cut out as much as possible so this includes things you may not at first think of i.e. treats. It sounds really harsh but cutting out treats at least for a short period of time to see if it works can do the dog a world of good. Unfortunately what we see a lot of people doing is saying their dog is allergic to chicken so they cut chicken out but forget they’re feeding chicken in the treats or when someone else feeds the dog it gets chicken that way. You do have to be quite strict and keep a close watch on everything your dog is getting as otherwise you can never get to the bottom of what your dog is intolerant to. With this in mind it’s much more effective and easier to feed as few different things as possible.

A great way to get to the bottom of a protein intolerance is to feed a protein source your dog has never had before. If your dog’s health improves it’s fairly safe to say that something in its previous diet was causing the issue. This will usually mean going outside of the more common protein sources such as chicken, beef, turkey and lamb. However, this doesn’t mean you’ll have to compromise on food quality or composition. We’ll now go over a few of the more unusual protein sources which are all raw and all comply with our same high standards as any other food we sell. We’re focusing on raw foods here but there are also loads of great quality dry foods which feature unusual protein sources as well.

Natures Menu Country Hunter Venison nuggets is 80% meat. It’s one of the easier to find of the unusual meats at least here in the UK.

Nutriment Rabbit is 85% meat. Rabbit works very well as an elimination diet as it’s very rarely included in a mixed protein source food.

Benyfit Natural’s 80-10-10 range includes both a Goat and a Pheasant 100% meat food. As the name suggests these are 80% muscle meat, 10% bone and 10% offal. It’s fairly safe to say that if you’re feeding a general food that your dog has probably never had goat before. It’s brilliant that Benyfit have brought out these unusual flavours especially the goat as it is an incredibly uncommon flavour.

So you now know what you can feed, so what’s the procedure? It’s as simple as moving over to one of these foods for a short period of time and see if it makes a difference. If the symptoms of the intolerance are the dog is excessively scratching see if it decreases while on the new diet and this goes for any symptom. It’s a case of monitoring your dog through the process and seeing what works for them. Every dog is different and what works for one might not work for another.

Any questions?

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If you know a dog that could be helped by this then please share. Sometimes the simplest things can change a dog’s life for the better. Thanks!