Allergy | Causes, diagnosis, treatment

More and more dog owners are aware that their dogs may suffer from allergies, exactly like humans do. A dog allergy can be triggered by common allergens, such as fleas, pampas grass, or specific foods.

If you notice your dog scratching a lot, or sneezing almost continuously for days, or if you see its fur falling off in large amounts, then you can suspect a dog food allergy and try to further investigate the problem.

Step one: closely examine the dog’s skin, looking for signs of parasites like fleas or ticks. Any small, black spots of dirt can come from such parasites, so even if you don’t see the insects with your very eyes, you can still give your pet an anti-flea treatment.

After you removed the flea allergy suspicion, watch your dog while playing outside: do the allergy symptoms occur mainly after frequenting some specific locations? Are there any peculiar plants in those places? Pollens? Pampas grass? Weeds? If you cannot establish a relation between the allergic reactions of your dog and the places he’s been in, you’d need to step further, in suspecting a food allergy.

Food allergies in dogs, like the ones in humans are properly diagnosed by an elimination diet. Remove one food at a time from your dog’s diet and watch the symptoms for about 1-2 weeks. Are the allergy symptoms still there, or are they alleviating slowly, to disappearance? If after one month of elimination diet your dog’s allergic manifestations are gone, then you know that was the food which acted like an allergen in this case. By simply removing it completely from the diet, your dog would be allergy-free for the rest of his life.

If the allergy symptoms are still present, then remove another food from your dog’s nutrition and repeat the observation until you manage to find out the cause of the allergy.

Don’t try to treat your dog food allergy with human allergy medication! This can be harmful and even cause your dog’s death. Humans and pets have different mechanisms of reaction to different substances. For example, a human can eat onions without any problem, while feeding a cat with onions would kill it, because onions contain a substance which is poisonous for cats. It is that easy to harm your pet!

The best advice, in case you notice allergy-like manifestations on your dog, is to take it to a vet, who can perform thorough investigations and give an appropriate allergy treatment for your dog. While airborn allergies may be difficult to control, especially in case of dogs, because you need to take your dog for a walk at least twice a day from obvious reasons, dog food allergies shouldn’t be a problem, once you get them diagnosed. Just don’t give your dog those foods anymore and you’re done.

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