Bichon skin allergy advice

bogman

Thanks for reading, my sisters dog has skin problems and her vet advised her to only feed her
SPECIFIC™ FDD-HY Food Allergy Management

http://www.dechra.eu/Topmenu/Specific-Diet-and-Nutrition/Products.aspx?pcatid=PRIMARY3&catid=PROPGRP9&fid=SPEC3&ProductID=PROD44

Its not cheap but you cant put a price on the dogs health, I spoke to a person in the know over the weekend and she advised feeding the dog boiled chicken and rice, what do you think folks, appreciate any advice

DBB

bogman wrote: »

Thanks for reading, my sisters dog has skin problems and her vet advised her to only feed her
SPECIFIC™ FDD-HY Food Allergy Management

http://www.dechra.eu/Topmenu/Specific-Diet-and-Nutrition/Products.aspx?pcatid=PRIMARY3&catid=PROPGRP9&fid=SPEC3&ProductID=PROD44

Does the vet sell this particular expensive dog food, by any chance?

bogman

Ive no idea but I guess so :-) typical isnt it !!!!

Rommie

Would she consider putting the dog on a raw diet? Raw can help clear up skin problems by excluding the allergens and feeding a bichon on it would be fairly cheap

tk123

OP rice and other cereals are often the cause of allergies... so I wouldn't bother with a food that's supposed to combat allergies but contains rice! There's plenty of cereal free options that would be much cheaper - take a look on eg zooplus.co.uk for some options.

DBB

bogman wrote: »

Ive no idea but I guess so :-) typical isnt it !!!!

All too common, I'm afraid!

Okay, to get a little more serious.. white dogs are demons for food allergies. Actually, for allergies generally.
Some of the prime causes of allergies are:
Wheat/gluten
Other cereals
Certain proteins which the dog has been sensitised to, often chicken or beef.
Storage mites
Harvest mites
Pollen
Other environmental things like dust mites, detergents, carpet cleaners etc

The first four are HUGE. They appear in the majority of allergy tests done on itchy dogs, so they're fair game to eliminate from an itchy dog's diet before embarking on expensive allergy tests.
As tk says, cereal free foods are a must, and that includes eliminating rice. So, you're left with spuds!
However, and here's the big problem, ALL dry dog foods contain storage mites, and storage mites are big players in the allergy league. So, owners with itchy dogs are told to get the dog onto an expensive "hypoallergenic" diet, which in fairness have often reduced or eliminated the common allergens. However, there's not much they can do about these little mites that live in all dry foodstuffs. And so the "hypoallergenic" food does not work. Worse again, itchy dogs are usually concurrently put on a course of steroids, to stave off the itching, which they do, and make the dog appear cured. But as soon as the steroids stop, the itchiness returns, because the dog continues to be exposed to these little mites via his food.
Dry dog food has any meat that's in it cooked, cooked, and cooked again. This distorts the proteins in the meat, making them "alien" to the dog's system, and the dog's immune system reacts to them, and becomes sensitised to them. This happens most often with the meats most commonly used in dry dog foods: chicken and beef.

So, the easiest way to see if any or all of these apply is to eliminate the lot: dry food, chicken and beef, just for now, and see what happens.
The dog should preferably not eat any cooked meat (due to that protein distortion... however, some dogs prefer the meat to be lightly cooked, and to my mind, having lightly cooked fresh meat is a whole, whole lot better than any dry dog food), and he should be given meats that are not chicken or beef. So, turkey, fish (oily fish is soooooo good for bad skin), and of you can get your mitts on other meats like duck, rabbit, or game, great! But outside the scope of most owners!
She can also add a little bit of cooked veg and spuds to bulk it out, but only a bit.
A Bichon-sized dog is not expensive to feed this way. If it's a route the owner would like to try, she'll find a huge amount of info on www.dogsfirst.ie

Once the dog has been on this exclusion diet for 6-8 weeks, the owner is going to know whether she's onto something. At that stage, she can start to slowly, and one-by-one, add in some chicken, then beef (because if the dog is not allergic to these, they are so much easier to get, and cheaper).
If this is all too much, then she could start feeding Naturediet or the like: it's a sort of ready-prepared version of the above and pretty good stuff, I think. Though for the same reasons as above, I'd avoid the chicken flavoured one for now! The best value I've seen for it is on www.zooplus.ie or www.zooplus.co.uk

bogman

Thanks for the feedback folk, ive passed this valuable information to my sister