Does your dog suffer from yeast infections, ear infections, excessive scratching etc?

Today we’re going to talk about Yeast Infections. Yay! This is actually a very common thing we’re asked about and when we asked customers what they wanted a video on Yeast Infections was high on the list.

Yeast Infections most commonly manifest in dogs as ear infections, itchy paws and other minor complaints. We say minor complaints but these can be very uncomfortable and painful for dogs and if your dog is prone to them it’s without a doubt worth taking them to the vets to be sure. However, through our years of being in the dog food industry we’ve found a few things which can really help with things like Yeast Infections.

The first thing to do is reduce the amount of carbohydrates in the dog’s diet. Ingredients high in carbohydrates are things like rice, wheat, corn and white potato. These ingredients are very common in a lot of dog foods and if your dog is prone to ear infections or scratches itself a lot, it’s definitely worth trying a food with less (or none) of these ingredients. You’ve got nothing to lose when trying this and there are plenty of very low carbohydrate and grain free foods readily available.

All Kibble foods will contain some carbohydrates but some low quality foods will have rice or wheat as the main ingredient so the quality of the food can make a huge difference. The easiest way to make sure is to do what we’ve always advocated and turn over the packet and look at the ingredients. If one of these high carbohydrate ingredients is high up on the list of ingredients it could well be causing your dog’s issues. A great thing to remember for this is the higher the meat content of the food, the less percentage of the food there is remaining for carbohydrates.

If however you feed your dog a raw diet there’s a much higher chance your food will be grain free. Raw foods with grain do exist but there aren’t many and the vast majority will be grain free meaning ingredients high in carbohydrates like rice, wheat and white potato won’t be present. In raw diets the main source of carbohydrates will be vegetables like butternut squash.

If you decide to eradicate carbohydrates from your dog’s diet entirely the best thing to do is feed what’s called a prey model. Simply put, a prey model means just meat, bone and offal. We’ve had a lot of success with people whose dogs are prone to ear infections and scratching moving over to a prey model diet. In the vast majority of cases the prey model diet has significantly reduced or even stopped these issues entirely.

There are many non-dietary measures you can take as well. Both coconut oil and apple cider vinegar are brilliant when applied topically to the infected or irritated areas. They can also be added in small amounts to the dog’s food. Going back to what we said at the start please do consult with your vet before doing this especially if your dog is very prone to these infections as there could also be an underlying issue which needs to be looked at.