Dog Protein Allergies

Protein allergies and dog food - How to deal with them.

Dog Protein allergies are quite common in dogs. Proteins are an essential part of your dogs diet but some dogs have an intolerance to certain proteins which can make them vomit, have diarrhea, or show skin irritation, poor coat condition and/or hair loss.

Different foods contain different types of protein so the easiest way to combat a protein allergy is to eliminate the protein your dog is allergic to from their diet. To do this you will have to discover, through a process of elimination, which protein your dog is allergic to.

Proteins are found in all meats and all meat based do food will contain protein. The best way to find out which protein your dog is allergic to is to move them onto a homemade diet where you can monitor exactly what is going into their food. Once you know which protein is causing the problem you can look for a suitable dog food that does not contain the protein.

If you move your dog onto a homemade dog food start them off using ingredients that are usually in their normal dog food so if your dog food contains pork, use pork. This will identify if your dog is still showing the symptoms of intolerance. If they are move them away from a pork based food and try different protein based ingredients to find those that don't have a negative effect on them.

Some of the most frequently used "novel"proteins (called novel because they are intended to be new to your pet) are egg, duck, salmon, lamb and whitefish. In certain cases, through the process of elimination, it may be discovered that your pet is allergic to all these protein sources and will need a food with specially broken down proteins.

The food I recommend for dogs with protein allergies is Hills Canine.