Just got back from the dermatologist!!!!

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Keltic

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Took Daisy May back to the dermatologist this evening, she has had a blood test done £195!! to test what allergens she is allergic to as she is so itchy and making a right mess of herself, she is fed on ultra low alergen food etc, they are putting her on a course of tablets for about 6 months at £150 per month and along with that we are going to try immune therapy and when we find what she is allergic too we will have a specialised vaccine made so i can inject her everyday untill she builds up antibodies, can only imagine how much that will be, oh well if it stops her itching then thats fine.... hopefully my insurance will cover most of it (fingers crossed) if not ill have to sell a kidney lol????? but i do love her and if i can find a cure for her i will im sure you all feel the same about your dogs??
 
Have you considered raw feeding? I had a dog who had terrible skin when I got her from rescue, she had a really long period of detox when she first went on the raw diet, she was barely a year old! I was shocked that it took a long time for her to be scratch free especially after she got wet, but after about 4-5 months on raw and with a lot of cod liver oil in the diet she had the most beautiful coat and never looked back.

I have one now that has taken quite a while from years on commercial food, he was 6 when I got him but now after a year he has shed out a couple of times he has a beautiful silky coat and no itches!

It was hard for me to accept that raw was best a first but now I would never go back to feeding any commerical cooked food in any format.

The trouble is the manufacturers are not obliged to tell you what they put into it and any form of bulk carbohydrate is unnatural for a dog, many use wheat which is dreadful stuff, they get away with describing it as vegetables!!! Others use rice which again is unnatural and I personally think this is where serious allergies are coming from in modern dogs.

Had a friend with a cat many years ago with a very similar problem to yours, who looked terrible and was on monthly steriod injections. Finally after much nagging she tried raw. The cat had just had a steriod injection and never went back for another. Cats are difficult with raw but this one went mad for it, she had to fit a fridge lock to keep him from helping himself!
 
I have two Australian Cattle Dogs, medium sized but quite stocky! Most of the diet is sourced from the local butcher and he charges the princely sum of about £3 to gather bones together!!! I have a small chest freezer so I can buy in bulk for them. I also get chicken wings from him at about 15p each, or from the supermarket. The supermarket reduced fridge is where you will find me! Basically I feed human grade food and organic where possible, especially fruit and veg.


It’s important no to mix the two diets as the raw food travels through the dog quite quickly and wheat and dried food does not, so serious problems can arise. Basically you don’t need to balance the diet on a daily basis and probably mine are balanced over a week or even two. If I am running low on something and they get Chicken for a week I don’t worry as wild canines would do that if there were a glut of some kind, like baby rabbits. So you need to think what they would get if wild. Sometimes they get it frozen if I forget to defrost it! They don’t mind at all!!

You do get a detox period where they will itch etc as the new diet bengins to take hold, but after this they are so much better.

For each of mine:

1 x Chicken Carcass with a bit of meat on it or 4-5 Chicken wings form the basis of the diet and I would feed that probably on average 4 days a week. Sometimes I buy a chicken for me, remove and roast the crown and they get the rest. Wings are really good as they have a perfect meat to bone ratio of about 80%. Occasionally they get turkey as well.

1 day a week I will feed mince of some kind a large packet between 2, to this I add a couple of heaped tablespoons of blended veg, like spinach plus carrots and anything left in the fridge, fruit as well but in small quantities and blended so as to break down the cellulose and make it available to the dog, like they would find it partially digested in a preys stomach. I usually use an egg as liquid with cold pressed (uncooked) cod liver oil or olive oil. I will also bung in a handful of pumpkin seeds from the health store as this will help remove worms by irritating them, and sometimes a kelp tablet as a supplement. Sometimes I use the dog packet minces frozen from the pet store.

I feed lamb ribs 1 each if they don’t have a lot of meat on them, and they will have those once or twice a week and one meal of offal, mine are not very keen on liver and kidneys but love hearts. Sometimes I will lightly brown liver so that they at least get some. They have frozen raw green tripe from the pet store and I rotate that as part of the offal meal.

Then I will feed whatever comes my way from the butcher, pork trotters occasionally as it does make them stink a bit! Rabbit they like, and deer bones and other game if I can get it. The only cooked they get is a tin of pilchards in tomato sauce, sometimes they get a raw fish mixed in from the reduced counter, whitebait are quite good. They will eat salmon heads as well.

I give eggs as a treat or bits of fruit and veg and the odd biscuit as a treat or Bob Martins beef jerky. They also get lamb spine bones as a treat to keep them quiet and occasionally a beef knuckle, but as they are inclined to squabble I have to take them away when I’m not about to supervise.

My sister has been feeding this a couple of years longer than me and has written a couple of papers on it here is the link to her website. http://members.aol.com/Brushbow/src/speciesmenu.htm


There is also a book by Ian Billingshurst called Give Your Dog a Bone it is a good start although I don’t agree with all his suggestions and don’t feed dairy or any form of bulk carbs (rice and pasta) this is another book that is for the purist http://home.earthlink.net/~affenbar/bookpage.html
 
Just watch some of this type of food, always read the label closely, I read the label the other day in the pet food shop, yes I am sad like that, it said with vegetables on the front but on the back it said Wheat as one of the top ingredients!!!

I avoid wheat for me and the dogs at all costs! Modern wheat is horrible stuff full of carbs and not much husk, I strongly believe it plays a major part in a lot of problems seen in modern companion animals. Dogs just dont need roughage in this form.
 
Had a quick look on the website but although it says the diets avoid foods thought to be common causes of allergies it doesn't list the ingredients of the "formulas". Have never had the need to feed any of these so I can't really comment on this one specifically.

Generally in studying ingredients of various dog foods I have found that they keep the costs down by bulking the food out in some way, the cheaper ones use wheat others use rice and oatmeal etc.

Personally I would not feed any source that is rich in carbohydrates to my carnivores on a regular basis. I treat these Human foods as junk foods for dogs and whilst they might form the odd treat they are not a part of the diet. There is also a high salt content in some commercial feeds just like in ready meals - to hide the lack of taste! This is not good for dogs or humans.

I just can't get my head around how a carnivore can become a diabetic; it's on the increase and can only be attributed to too much carbs and sugar in the diet of an animal not designed to process excess levels of carbohydrate/sugar. Unlike human food in dog food they are not obliged to list all ingredients or the levels used so how can you tell? In the USA certainly it was discovered that euthanized companion animals found their way into dog food, complete with the barbiturates that killed them, which do not break down!


By far my biggest gripe is that most canned, packet and dried food is not just cooked by boiled extensively or cooked at high heat until dry and to me this is not acceptable for my dogs, I just think its silly to cook something to death then add artificial vitamins and minerals back in which may not be bio available to the dog, and to have to give artificial bones to chew on to clean the teeth. I just give it raw!

Dr Ian Billingshurst, an Australian vet in his book notes that the proliferation of diseases seen in dogs involving allergies and cancers coincide with the introduction of commercial pet foods in both the US and Australia and I agree. When you look closely at the ingredients and ask questions there are a lot of hidden problems, from carcinogens in colorants to high levels of carbohydrates disguised as vegetables, which must have an effect when fed to a carnivore with a short gut designed to eat meat and bones and also to scavenge on putrid flesh.

I don't know if raw can turn around your problems at this stage but it would certainly be worth considering from my experience and would be a lot cheaper than the current regime if an improvement is seen which I suspect it would. There are a growing number of vets (mostly homeopaths) who advocate raw diets, though some play down the influence of raw meat and bones in favour of vegetables and to me this is wrong. That’s another route you could consider - consulting a homeopathic vet?
 
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