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Food intolerance - recommend a food
So a quick update on Buddy, our rescue. Behaviorly, he's doing great - we had the trainer come for a private session last week, and he starts Scaredy Dog class tonight (wish us luck). He's still wary of my h, but he's decided that our bed is his personal playground (whether or not we're in it) and he loves sitting on the couch with us now. The private session really helped my husband learned to resist his urge to try to pet Bud, letting Bud approach him without any risk, and it seems to be building some trust and confidence between the two of them.
On the medical side, his stomach is still a mess. We have another appointment with the internist this weekend to talk about an endoscopy, but she's also recommend we change his diet to address possible food intolerance. I did speak with his former foster home again about his past diets (he was on an intestinal specific formula when we adopted him) and they've indicated that they tried both boiled chicken and rice and a grain free diet with no good results. I'd like to get him started right away on an alternative (our local vet also mentioned that chicken was a source of food intolerance for a lot of dogs).
We currently feed Fromm's, but there are a lot of ingredients in even the flavors that feature non-trigger protiens, like fish. Can anyone recommend a hypoallergenic food? Is the Fromm's potato and whitefish something we should start with?
Re: Food intolerance - recommend a food
I'm not an expert, but I'm guessing that there's no such thing as a hypoallergenic food, sadly. Since every dog is different, you'll have to trial-and-error it until you find something that works.
I believe the general concensus is that unique protein sources - duck, buffalo/bison, kangaroo, etc - are better for food-sensitive dogs because they haven't been over-exposed. Hopefully someone will chime in with some actual recommendations.
Phew...I wish I knew what to tell you.
Our rescue had a dog (this beautiful boy) who had such severe allergies that he had to eat a kangaroo and oat formula. It worked though...he was so happy once we figured that out.
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We just switched Renzo to Natural Balance venison formula since it's a single protein limited ingredient food. His allergies seem to be much better so we're hoping the food switch did the trick!
Good luck!
If it's possible, you might try feeding him a prey model raw diet. The problem in a lot of food allergy/intolerance cases is in the cooking of the proteins. Dogs who have horrible reactions to a chicken formula dog food (in which the chicken ingredient has been cooked), can and do successfully and happily eat raw chicken with no issues whatsoever.
It's just a thought for you to store away in case other avenues don't work for you. I know a lot of people are completely put off at the idea of feeding raw meats/bones/organs, but really if you use conventional clean-up methods, it's a total nonissue.
B/w 1/8: betas 17,345, progesterone 25.6
I was going to say this. We feed California Natural and are really happy. We moved to that from another food because we like to feed lamb for healthy coats, but needed a reduced fat which they had. We then learned another benefit is very few ingredients--easy to isolate if an allergy/intolerance ever does develop.
Hope that helps.
Ditto. It really helped our pup that had a lost of gastrointestinal issues and was about 15 pounds underweight when we first adopted him. It turned out that proteins we thought he was allergic to, could be eaten in raw meat form without any problems. I like it because it allows me to pinpoint every single aspect of their diet.
One of my dogs is allergic to grains, beef, and chicken. I feed TOTW Pacific Stream (I recommend trying this one first, it's fish and sweet potato) and also the Sierra Mountain formula (lamb and rice). If you're more comfortable with the Fromm's, I'd try that, but read the label very carefully for chicken. Chicken hides in nearly every food, believe me, it took me a long time to find a good fit for all three dogs!
Also, most treats have grains and/or chicken, so keep an eye on those. I've had good success with Zuke's.
Hey all, thank you so much for the recommendations.
I'm actually not opposed to raw - and our trainer recommended it...we started our female aussie on raw a few years ago, but she also has a food allergy and had a bad reaction to it (and TOTW, and Merrick's). I'll definitely keep it as a possibility, although I'd love to get them on a similar routine (even if they're not on the same brand).
I'll definitely check out some of the limited protein/limited ingredient diets today. We do use the Zuke's already - that was another concern, as we're working on behavior modification as well.
I'd just love to start him on something before we go back to the internist, so we have some feedback for her. I mean, I'd love if the bloody diarrhea stopped as well, since all of my carpets are white...but I swear my primary motivation is his comfort.
Our pup has some gastrointestinal issues. His first month or so he finished off his Eukanuba food from the rescue (he had loose stools with this, plus we knew we did not want to have our dog on Eukanuba), we then tried a simple chicken and rice diet (almost positive he is allergic to chicken now), then Blue Buffalo but that stuff is really high in protein (he had diarrhea from it, SEVERE gas..I mean it was nonstop, audible, and deadly, and he threw it up a few times), we finally have found that Natural Balance potato and duck formula is perfect for him. It's a limited ingredient food. We've tried the venison formula too and he did well with that. When this bag runs out I think we will try to the fish formula and see how he does, then rotate between those 3 flavors.
His coat has never looked better (he suffered from demodectic mange as a stray and was still pretty splotchy when he got him), he has great energy, loves the food, and his gas has improved immensely.