Elimination Diet

WHY ARE THEY NEEDED?

If your dog is itchy, has loose stools, acid reflux, recurring ear infections, IBS/IBD or any other digestive or skin issues it’s time to do an elimination diet.

FOOD ALLERGIES AND INTOLERANCES

Food allergies and food intolerances are two different things, food allergies which are an IgE response are rare, only around 10% true food allergies can not be changed, once you have a food allergy you have it for life, food intolerances however can build over time, and change with time, food sensitivities are an IgG response and are more common.

TESTING

Unfortunately, food intolerance tests on the market are known to produce false positives and false negatives which makes them very unreliable. The best way of identifying which foods suit your dog is through an elimination diet.

WHERE TO START

Ideally, look for a novel protein to start with or a protein your dog has never had as they will potentially be less likely to react to this. Here are some examples.

Rabbit

Hare

Horse

Pork

Pheasant

Venison

Goat

Kangaroo

Ostrich

Quail

FOOD TO INITIALLY AVOID

chicken and beef are known to be the main culprits but it must be noted that all dogs are individuals and some dogs with issues do very well on these proteins, but if you have a dog with issues we would remove these from diet initially and reintroduce at a later date to see if they are then tolerated.

We also recommend initially removing tripe and all fermented foods like ACV, kefir and fermented veggies, whilst they have lots of benefits they are also high in histamine so with itchy reactive dogs we remove and reintroduce later.

HOW LONG TO FEED EACH PROTEIN

Feed this diet for a minimum of 6 weeks but if well tolerated 12 weeks is best as food intolerances often take 3 months to resolve/change. It’s extremely important during this period to only feed that protein including treats, if you feed even the smallest amounts of other foods the elimination diet is pointless.

IS THIS BALANCED?

Elimination diets are generally not balanced but this won’t be detrimental for adult dogs as you are not feeding an unbalanced diet for a long period, it takes a long time for dietary insufficiencies to cause harm, if you need to do an elimination diet for a very young pup we recommend guidance from a nutritionist.

SAFE PROTEIN

What’s a safe protein? Your safe protein is a protein you know suits your dog. Elimination diets take time and patience, If you feed something that doesn’t agree stop straight away and go back to your “safe protein” if you have one, feed this until the symptoms have subsided and then start again with a new protein. Don’t give up!

GUT HEALTH

Gut health is the holy grail! 70% of your dog's immunity lays in the gut, if your dog has issues it’s due to poor gut health, it’s imperative you work on healing the gut, doing an elimination diet alone will not solve the issues, you can not miss this very important step.

WORKING WITH AN EXPERT

We always recommend working with an expert as these issues tend to be complicated and complex, the gut needs to be healed and the immune response modulated this is not an easy task to do alone, we recommend working with mypetnutritionist.com

Here is a list of single protein foods, please be aware these may change over time so please always check.