Allergic Dog

[yardazz]

Hello everyone!

I adopted a 4 year old beautiful pied female French Bulldog from a breeder in May of this year. Since I got her it seems that she has developed an itching condition. She is now eating Solid Gold Hund-n-flocken dry food.

I have a posted on this board and got many responses with great information.

The only thing I still need a little help on is.....
what is the difference between a rew food diet, all green diet and a single meat source diet? Is one better than the other for solving allergies?

I am feeling so very despirate to find an answer.

Thank you very much for your time!

[gmacleod]

The purpose of a single meat source diet (more correctly called an elimination diet) is determining what a dog is allergic to. It is possible to do the same thing with a kibble diet - but it's much harder. The reason for that is that it is not really feasible to add one single thing at a time to a kibble diet - which is how you find out whether or not a particular ingredient is an allergy problem for your dog. With raw food, conversely, you control the ingredients absolutely. So if you want to test whether something is a problem, it's a simple matter to add *only* that ingredient to the food.

The basis of an elimination diet *must* be a meat source that the dog has never previously eaten, and therefore cannot have pre-existing antibodies against (allergies being an abnormal response of the immune system). This is why most allergy diets are based on "exotic" meats such as venison or duck - because most dogs haven't had them before.

Common allergens include corn, wheat, soy, beet pulp and chemical preservatives. Best to choose foods that do not include those ingredients (though of course, it's possible for a dog to be allergic to anything at all). It's worth bearing in mind also that allergies can be (and actually usually are) environmental.