Dog Food Allergies - Causes and Treatments

If you have a pet, for me that is a dog, you would understand that people treat their pets like family members and their best friends. That's why it worries us when they are sick. Dog's can be having many health problems but allergies are more often than everything else. Even allergies are not the same. Symptoms can be very similar but causes are different. Most often allergies are from flea bite, atopy which is inhalant allergy, yeast or bacterial infections, food allergies and others.

Dog food allergies can be more easily developed with some dogs than the others because some animals are seem to be predisposed to development of this type of allergy. What is misassumption is that food, which you have just presented to your dog, is less likely to trigger an allergy then the food that your dog is consuming for longer period of time, maybe even years. That's actually how food allergy is developed in most cases.

How can you recognize that your dog suffer from food allergy? Symptoms mostly include some sort of skin irritation. It is itchy skin, licking and scratching around the forelegs area, ears, legs, tummy and the area around the tail. What you should also pay attention to is if these symptoms are seasonal caused by pollen or dust for example. If symptoms are being repeated through all year, than it is probably food allergy. Chronic ear infection which you dog can manifest through shaking his head frequently, hair loss, hot spots can also give you the clue.

There are things that your dog's vet can do to help your dog but before you try with all that expensive tests try to do it yourself. Even your dog's vet could have troubles to diagnose dog food allergies because symptoms can easily be symptoms of some other type of allergies, mostly inhalant allergies. Also dogs often suffer from more than one problem so it would be wise to eliminate all other causes, to deal with one problem at the time and when it's just food allergies left, the food trial can start.

Even if you want to prevent this type of allergy, there is nothing you can do because the causes of dog food allergies are unknown. It is the same kind of food that have been causing the problems to humans like beef, chicken, fish, eggs and dairy products that are mostly responsible for dog food allergies, as well.

The treatment for dog food allergies is about eliminating the food that your dog had previously consumed. His meals should be replaced with a high carbohydrate and rich in proteins diet with water and nothing else for twelve weeks. New food should be something that your dog has never had before like rabbit, duck, salmon and if you see any improvement after that period you can start adding the old food but one kind per time, like chicken for example and, after two weeks, if nothing bad happens you can try another one. But if symptoms get back at least you know that your dog is allergic to chicken. That is how you are going to find the food that he is not allergic to.

Like I said, your dog is your best friend so try to give your best to help him.