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Need help from dog owners with btdt advice regarding food allergy


extendedforecast
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Our 7 month old puppy broke out in a small rash that quickly spread all over her belly. She was miserable as I tried to figure out what was causing the allergy. I took her to the vet and she was given antibiotics and a steroid prescription as well as a shampoo and spray. We were told to change her food to a grain free, fish or lamb based food. I also stopped giving her peanut butter in case that was the culprit. So I went to the store I normally go to, but I couldn't find anything that had the criteria above AND that was for puppies. The guy at the store recommended the something, saying it was for both adult dogs and puppies. When I got home, I realized that the feeding chart only had recommendations for dogs. I read the fine print for instructions for puppies but found nothing. I've been feeding her a cup more than the recommended amount. Am I doing the right thing? Should I look elsewhere for a better option?

Edited by extendedforecast
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What breed(s) is she? Or approximate size? At seven months old she should be fine on an adult or "all life stages" food unless she's a giant breed.

 

I'd want to either do a home-made food allergy elimination diet or I'd go with a *very* limited ingredient commercial food. The fewer ingredients the better.

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Many brands now have limited ingredient varieties. As with any dog food, introduce new food very gradually. With my second guy, I started slowly switching out from puppy food at about 7-8 months. He is a small breed/ poodle mix of about 15lbs (1yo weight).

 

If you are interested in preparing your own home cooked dog food, Balance It has some menu ideas on balancing the nutrition your dog might need. I use a different supplement, not the expensive one on their site. Takes some trial and error. I have to home cook because my other guy is allergic to many every day ingredients. Home cooking is now easy peasy because I have been doing it a while but it took some tweaking at the start. This boy is also a small breed (also 15lb adult weight) and overall cost per month is a lot cheaper than it would be for a large breed.

 

Good luck.

Edited by quark
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What breed(s) is she? Or approximate size? At seven months old she should be fine on an adult or "all life stages" food unless she's a giant breed.

 

I'd want to either do a home-made food allergy elimination diet or I'd go with a *very* limited ingredient commercial food. The fewer ingredients the better.

She's a German Shepherd, and she weighed 52 pounds. Edited by extendedforecast
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She's a German Shepherd, and she weighed 52 pounds.

 

That's kind of borderline size for what I'd want on a large breed puppy food for a few more months. But given the issues I'd try to find an all life stages limited ingredient food. Or start home-cooking or raw feeding.

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Some great advice above ... but I wanted to add something that I only found out through some major digging since my vet was unaware of this issue.  Some dogs do not do well on a fish based diet.  In certain dogs, it can raise the pH of their urine and make them more susceptible to chronic urinary tract infections.  This happened to our dog as we were looking for a food he could tolerate since he gets very itchy with foods that have grain in them AND he gets the runs when he has chicken and other poultry.  Finding a grain-free, chicken-free food is challenging.  When we switched from a fish-based food to a bison-based food, his UTIs disappeared. 

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Mine is doing well on limited ingredient turkey food: Dry from Zignature, and wet from Nature's Fresh (FreshPet).  The more obscure protein options did a number on her stomach.  The Zignature bag say to feed puppies two times as much as the adult amount, if that helps.

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My dog is allergic to just about everything- chicken, beef, wheat, milk, etc, etc,  We have had him on a duck and potato diet and that has worked out well.  The dry food is potato and duck and the canned food is duck and potato.  The brand is Natural Balance. They also have venison and potato and some other combos.  We did blood allergy testing and found out what he was allergic to.

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My previous dog was allergic to almost every animal protein and had inhalant allergies as well. After years of trial and error, we did allergy testing and that was very helpful. He ended up doing well on canned Wellness Venison and Sweet Potato.

 

I think your best best is going to be ordering food online. Natural Balance, Blue Buffalo, and Nutro all make limited ingredient diets for puppies. There might be others as well. I like to buy from Amazon, PetFoodDirect, and chewy.com. Both PetFoodDirect and Chewy let you search for foods by life stage, type of food, protein source, limited ingredients, etc. Here are the Chewy results for limited ingredient puppy diets.

 

I found it was also helpful to wash my dog's paws (or wipe them with a wet cloth) after every trip outside. I gave him baths once or twice a week using Malaseb shampoo to combat the bacterial and fungal infections to which he was prone. Wash bedding frequently, too.

 

Good luck!

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Ditto Katie about the possibility of it being inhalant allergies.

 

Unfortunately, those are generally much harder to control.

 

Food allergies are easy to control once you identify the trigger food(s).

 

Also unfortunately, most dogs who are allergic have anywhere from several to many triggers. It's rarely just one or two. Our previous dog tested positive to 37 substances.

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