If you’ve ever had a dog who suffers from allergies, changing its diet may not be something you’ve considered. But using a dog elimination diet recipe can have huge benefits, and it’s so much better for your dog than medication.

The traditional way of dealing with dog allergies

If you’re someone who has experienced the upset of seeing their dog in discomfort or pain because of allergies or skin problems, you know how frustrating it can be. Your dog’s incessant itching and scratching is almost as painful for you as it is for them.

It’s at that point that most pet parents rush their dog to the vet for instant relief. The problem is, that relief is generally in the form of medication. Antibiotics, steroids or NSAIDs. Drugs that will do three things:

• Hide the symptoms of your dog’s problem (the itching, the scratching, the rash, the diarrhoea)
• Kill off the good bacteria in your dog’s gut
• Damage your dog’s immune system rendering it more susceptible to all manner of other canine diseases

To add insult to injury, it’s at this point so many vets then recommend their unwitting client puts their beloved pet on a so-called ‘prescription diet’. A hugely expensive, nutritionally-compromised, highly processed dog food that in addition to being little different from normal dog food, is never going to get to the root cause of your dog’s problem in a month of Sundays!

And yet there is a way, a better, safer way to get to the bottom of your dog’s problem. It’s a 100% natural and healthy way that will not compromise your best friend’s immune system. That will not cost you the earth, and will not simply bury your dog’s symptoms so that the problem manifests itself somewhere else later on.

It’s called an elimination diet and it uses a dog elimination diet recipe, something best designed for your pup by a qualified canine nutritionist. Why? Because vets are not trained in nutrition, and when veterinary professionals do recommend an elimination or exclusion diet for dogs, it can sometimes do more harm than good.

So what is an elimination diet?

A dog elimination diet does exactly what is says on the tin. It eliminates. It eliminates allergens. Problematic proteins that may be causing your dog’s allergies, skin problems, itchiness and digestive issues. In the right hands, created by the right person, it’s a healthy and natural, non-invasive diagnostic tool that works every time.

And the best bit is that it’s so much easier, so much cheaper, so much less stressful than a trip to the vets. And it’s likely to get to the root cause of the problem. Something your vet is not likely to be interested in because it’s simpler for them to prescribe medication. Medication that will hide the problem and keep you coming back for yet further treatment.

But the thing about an elimination diet is that even if your dog’s itchiness is not diet related, an improved diet will help rebalance its gut microbiome. Its gut bacteria. This in turn will boost your best friend’s immune system because 80% of its immune system is in its gut.

As a result of this, your dog will be less susceptible to skin infections, ear infections and irritations that make it constantly want to itch and scratch. So an elimination diet, a dog exclusion diet, will make you aware of what your dog is allergic to or intolerant of. If your dog suffers from food allergies, if he or she is intolerant of certain foods, a dog exclusion diet is the easiest and simplest way to find out exactly what the problematic ingredient is.

About this elimination diet

As any dog nutritionist will tell you, nutrition is at the heart of every single dog health problem. Every canine disease will have at least some nutritional component to it.

Is your dog itching, scratching or chewing? Does your best friend seem to have more or less constant ear infections or skin rashes? These are symptoms that something is not right inside your dog. They are not problems. They are signs that somewhere deep inside your constant canine companion, something is not agreeing with it. And that ‘something’ relates to issues in its gut.

Something in your dog’s diet is not agreeing with it. And the itching and scratching, licking and chewing, well they’re just your dog’s way of letting you know that it’s in trouble. That it needs your help. And the only true way of ascertaining what that is, is not with medication from the vet. Antibiotics, steroids or NSAIDs are simply going to mask the problem. Sweep it under the carpet where it can lay dormant just waiting for the right moment to rear its ugly head again.

No, the only way to deal with these symptoms is to have a qualified dog nutritionist create you a dog elimination diet recipe. An exclusion diet for dogs that will tell you what protein is causing your dog’s issue.

How do you carry out an elimination diet?

An elimination diet using a dog elimination diet recipe essentially involves eliminating from your dog’s diet all its usual ingredients. Your dog can only react negatively to ingredients it is used to. So by removing all the usual ingredients in its diet, changing its food, you effectively eliminate any potential allergen.

You then feed your dog a bland diet made with ‘novel’ ingredients. Ingredients your dog has never tried before. Because your dog has never tried those ingredients before, it can’t react negatively to them.

This can only be designed by a dog nutritionist. Why? Because It’s a little-known fact that vets are not trained in canine nutrition. And when some vets do try to suggest an elimination or exclusion diet, they invariably recommend unsuitable ingredients because nutrition is not a familiar subject to them.

An elimination diet then will eliminate all the ingredients in your dog’s current diet. Your canine nutritionist will formulate a diet just for your dog using novel proteins. Novel ingredients that your dog has never tried before.

Once your dog’s digestion has settled down and his or her allergies resolved, then and only then are other ingredients reintroduced into its diet one at a time until the offending ingredient is found. This ingredient can be avoided, eliminated from your dog’s diet in the future.

Your canine nutritionist will then formulate a safe diet for your dog, one that excludes any problematic proteins.

Make sure you use a dog nutritionist

And there’s another reason why only a qualified dog nutritionist can formulate your dog’s elimination diet. If you feed your dog commercial dog food, you cannot be certain exactly what ingredients it contains. It has been proven time and time again that dog food labels are notoriously inaccurate. On top of that, commercial dog food uses so many synthetic ingredients and by-products, it’s impossible to know the ‘true’ ingredients of your dog’s commercial dog food.

Commercial dog food manufacturers are not compelled to be totally accurate on their labels. Neither are they compelled to declare the exact ingredients in their products. That is why so many pet parents find their dog’s condition improves once they make the switch to fresh food. In addition to fresh food being considerably more healthy, they also know precisely what they are feeding their dog when they make fresh food for it.

One recent study concluded that “commercial pet foods might contain unlisted food sources that could negate the usefulness of performing food trials.” It went on to say that “the mislabelling of pet foods appears rather common.”

Finding a suitable diet for your dog can be life changing. Please book a consultation and we’ll work together to find a suitable diet for your dog.