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Have you tried the Royal Canin hydrolyzed diet? When Sully’s allergies appeared, my vet prescribed him this food just so we could see if his allergies were food related or an environmental allergy. My vet told me that if his symptoms did not go away after a month or two of feeding him this food, then his allergies must be environmental because no dogs can be allergic to the Royal Canin hydrolyzed food. After feeding him the RC hydrolyzed diet for about a month or two, his symptoms were completely gone. It was a remarkable improvement. Maybe you should talk to your vet about Royal Canin and try it out. You also might want to consider environmental allergies like grass or something outside.
Have you tried any novel proteins like kangaroo, rabbit, duck, buffalo etc.? Also, if you’ve been feeding grain free foods, that might be the problem. Eliminating grain free products from my Dane’s diet really made a difference with his allergies. The hydrolyzed might be your best option if you haven’t tried all the novel proteins, but it is very pricey (when Sully was on it he had no allergic reaction to it). But if you are able to afford it, I would say you should just stick with that. If I was able to keep Sully on the hydrolyzed food I would, but he went through a bag of it every two weeks and thats almost 160 dollars a month.
I have a 1 year old Great Dane who has gone through this. I first started him on a grain-free lamb Taste of the Wild formula and the same thing happened to him. In between his toes was always red, he had rashes, scratch at his ears constantly, had little bumps underneath his chin etc. I also fed him the Royal Cannin food, and I kept him on this for about 2 months. His symptoms improved tremendously but I couldn’t afford to pay 60 dollars a bag with a dog who eats so much food! My vet suggested that I try a novel protein-limited ingredient diet. I wasn’t sure what this meant at first, but it basically means all proteins that your dog has not been exposed to. So, Kangaroo, Duck, Bison, venison with just one other ingredient like rice or potatoes. I put Sully on grain-free Kangaroo and Duck formula but he just got worse. Surprisingly, I tried the food that your dog is on now (except for large breeds) his symptoms were completely gone! He’s been doing so much better and I’m so thankful because he was so miserable. What I would suggest doing is staying on the hydrolyzed (royal cannin) for about 2 months just to see if his symptoms go away, and if they do, then try out the limited ingredient novel proteins. Chewy.com has some great ones, they ship really fast too!
In my case, I think that Sully was allergic to some of the ingredients in the grain-free foods I had been feeding him (thank you to the kind individual on this message board who pointed this out to me), not necessarily the type of protein. However, I’ve read that a lot of dogs are more allergic to the most common proteins like chicken or beef, so that could be what you’re experiencing. So definitely stay on the hydrolyzed and then try out limited ingredient novel protein diets.
Hanna,
Thank you SO much! That was very helpful. He has always been on a grain free so you may be right, he could be allergic to some of those ingredients!
