Hey all,
So poor Samson(4months old) and I have been battling food allergies for about 2-3 weeks now, I had a quick question on how you "know" when you've found a good food for them? Initially I had started him on Wellness CORE puppy wet&dry, which is mostly chicken.... and he came down with a lot of itches and paw licking so I knew he's most likely allergic to chicken. So then I switched him to Zignature/Acana chicken/beef free for about ~1.5 weeks, I couldn't really tell if it helped a whole lot since he kept itching (probably not enough time passed to really see) .... and then store we buy from had a big sale and a really nice employee (Who has a golden doodle with terrible allergies) talked me through all the options and pricing comparisons for making the switch to raw, which I'd assumed was out of my price range but is actually pretty much the same as Acana- so we made the jump. And the one thing I immediately noticed was that his stools went from large, really soft bowel movements 3 or so times a day on the old food to much smaller and firm and he only has to go about twice a day now.... the difference was literally overnight!
So right now Samson gets Primal Pronto raw Lamb, with a little bit of goats milk and pumpkin 3x a day (and one squirt of fish oil on his breakfast)..... if his stools have firmed up is that indicative that he is doing better with this food or is that just a raw thing? He's still SO itchy, he wakes up at night wimpering because he will have an itch-fit and be unable to settle back down after going out to potty. His little face is red and he has scabs on his wrinkles he will break sometimes, it looks awful. I feel so bad for him. I'm giving him a little benadryl morning and night, and I will be getting an anti-yeast/anti-itch spray for him tomorrow to hopefully help him out.
How long generally does it take them to recover from food allergies? How did you "know" when you found the right protein? Is there anything else I should be doing to try and diagnose his allergy? what if he is allergic to the Lamb!
I have a 3 year old Frenchie who has had a long hard road with allergies. She ate Royal Canin for the first 6 months then started regurgitating white foam over 20 times a day, a puddle. We worked with our vet on several food changes and she was still regurging and loosing weight. Took her to critical care vet and had testing and barium swallow, nothing found. Used prescription food from the vet and still vomiting. We couldn't watch her regurg anymore so we started cooking chicken thighs in the crock pot and chopping it up, adding salt free green beans and the regurg stopped in 2 weeks. We slowly started adding one food at a time, rice no, salmon no, eggs no, sweet potato no, potato no. We added chicken fat from the crock pot chicken and now add a nurtra vet vitamin and fish oil daily. She is doing awesome, holding a healthy weight, almost no regurg. She has many environmental allergies, if she goes outside by certain plants, her nose runs profusely. We barely take her outside and bathe her monthly with earth bath hypoallergenic and follow with zymox lp3 enzyme system conditioning rinse. Before using these to bath her, her coat was wirey and so flaky, now she is soft and no more flaking. She does lick her feet but we think it is boredom and we tell her no no and she stops. They are so much work, but so worth it.
