Symptoms of dog food allergies

The most common symptoms occur as skin irritations such as itching, digging, scratching,   and gnawing at the skin, and ear infections.

These might seem like minor nuisances but can you imagine if you where plagued by such annoyances every moment of your life? It would be a living hell.

Also you might consider that a lot of dogs with dog food allergies can have dog food intolerance as outlined below. This is a lesser issue, but health wise can be just as devastating in the long run and you will soon see why.

What is dog food intolerance

The following is like the difference between a celiac (allergic to gluten in some grains like wheat) and a person who is intolerant to grains.  The intolerance will be an annoyance but is unlikely to cause major illnesses associated with a full blown allergy.   However in the long term it can have a very bad effect.

A food intolerance (for a dog or human) is a digestive problem rather than an immune response. That is, there are no histamines created in the body that cause the itchiness and other physical issues on the skin.  Instead, a dog food intolerance happens when a dog’s digestive system is unable to digest a specific ingredient.  This can be the case with such things as animal fats.  Whereas the dog allergy usually happens to a dogs body reacting to a protein in a meat or vegetable.

The problem with dog food intolerance is that if a dog can have constant diarrhea which means that it is eventually going to end up with malnutrition and its immunity will also suffer.  This can lead to a myriad of secondary diseases that are as severe as a dog food allergy issue causes.

Symptoms of a dog food intolerance?

The signs of food intolerance include mostly digestive issues such as – gas, bloating, nausea, diarrhea or in extreme cases vomiting. The signs rapidly go away after the food causing the tolerance has been expelled. Whereas a dog food allergy will cause histamines which can take a while to leave the body

In a famous dog food allergy of  238 food allergic dogs. Beef was the biggest cause of allergy

• beef (95 cases).
• Dairy 55 dogs.
• Wheat 42 dogs

The overall results were that: Beef, dairy, chicken, egg, lamb, soy, fish & pork accounted for 231 of the dog food allergies.

Wheat, rice and corn accounted for 54.

But at the end of all of this remember that dog food allergies are the rarest of the three classes of dog allergy.  Get your dog tested and put on an exclusion diet and stick to it if you want full results.