Home Cooking for Dogs and Food Allergies
October 13th, 2009
Home cooking for dogs is about as much science as it is art. While the basics are simple (cook food for your dog and don’t poison them), the nuances keep sprouting up all around while learning to cook for dogs. My first concern was dog allergies from food.
Dog Food Allergies
After home cooking for my dogs for about two weeks, I noticed that the dogs became really itchy. I mean, waking up in the middle of the night to scratch and consequently waking me up, too, kind of itchy! Initially, one of my dogs was moderately itchy while on kibble but after the myriad of foods I had fed them, both of them were crazy itchy.
My poor dogs were obviously victims of food allergies as their diet was their only recent lifestyle change. Dogs usually aren’t born with a food allergy but begin to develop it as they eat the food repeatedly. Symptoms of allergies may be subtle like paying a lot of attention to their feet to open sores on the skin that could lead to secondary infections. Frequently the dogs display excessive scratching. Dog food allergies might also cause intestinal upset, but I’m sure most owners avoid these foods after one bad run in. In some cases, food allergies may manifest as acute respiratory problems. Please use your discretion if you think your dog is having trouble breathing and take them to the vet!
Identifying the source of food allergies is challenging if it is a food allergy at all. As dogs can’t talk, they have no way of informing us which foods make them itch. If one is not keen on taking the dog in for medical allergy testing, a practical and systematic approach will be necessary. Try to observe the dogs while feeding them a restricted diet and carefully adding sources of possible food allergies. If testing for protein allergy, for instance, use the same starch in the recipe.
My first suspicion for my dogs’ allergies was the source of starch. Starch tends to often be the culprit for food allergies. After eating brown rice the itching seemed to increase, so I switched them to potatoes. In nature, a dog would be much more likely to dig up a tuber as opposed to eating rice that needs to be processed with opposable thumbs.
If it is not the starch the next probably suspect is the protein source. Dogs tend to develop allergies to food products they eat regularly. Since the most common protein in dog food tends to be beef products, that can be a source of dog allergies. Sometimes finding a food with fish protein or something less common like duck or rabbit can resolve an allergy.
If after testing, there still seems to be an itching problem, there may be other problems going on in the puppy.
Introducing New Foods
If you find a recipe that seems to keep your dog happy and not itchy that’s great! But a dog can’t be expected to eat the same recipe for their whole lives. Home cooked dog food is not all-inclusive like kibble or commercial food. It only contains the vitamins and minerals in those particular foods unlike supplemented commercial foods. New allergy approved foods will have to be added to the doggy menu.
Simply make sure each food does not produce a reaction in the dog. Add foods one at a time and monitor them for up to a week looking for adverse reactions. Make small changes and record the results.
Some dogs, like people, have more severe allergies. French bull dogs are notorious for their itchy skin that may be cause by their environment or their food and may require steroids. While moderate allergies may just produce a lot of feet licking or scratching, skin allergies caused by food can include scaly skin, baldness and sores. These dogs often have many allergies that will take plenty of perseverance to resolve.
