What is food allergy dermatitis and how is it treated?

Food allergy dermatitis is a little more specific. A dog who has food allergy dermatitis has skin problems due to the diet they're eating. When I talk to people about food allergies, it's not that their dog has a problem with Purina, Hills, Science Diet, or Blue. It is the allergen. It's beef, chicken, corn, wheat, soy, or something in the food they're having a problem with.

Many people want to change foods because they think their dog has a food allergy. Well, I'll be honest, most of the over-the-counter foods are very similar, and it's hard to diagnose food allergies that way. So we do this with what we call novel protein diets, alligator and green pea diets, kangaroo and potato, and duck is frequently used. It's allergen sources the dogs never had before, so they really can't be allergic to it. We also use hydrolyzed proteins, which is chicken, and your dog may be allergic to chicken, but they've broken the chicken into such small pieces, hydrolyzed the proteins so that the dog's body no longer understands it's eating chicken. So it can't be allergic to it. So there are special ways to go about that as we work through food allergy dermatitis.

Food allergy testing is really difficult because you have to feed that novel protein and nothing else because there are food allergy tests out there that are crappy tests. They're a waste of people's money. I don't do them. When we do food allergy testing, we're actually doing food allergy trials, which means we put the dog on one of these specific foods and nothing but that food for six weeks, no cheating. No McDonald's French fry, nothing from the table, and no dog treats. Nothing but this food for six weeks. And if they get better, they are food allergic. That's a tough test, though. Few can pass it, and it's not the dogs that determine that usually.

Food allergy dermatitis is the third most common type of allergy we see. It is a reaction or what we call an adverse food reaction, which is primarily caused by the main protein in the diet that leads to skin problems for your pet. The most common skin problems we see are biting, scratching, licking, itching, and chewing, primarily on the face and around the feet, the armpits, up around the ears, and, in many cases, around the back half of the body or the groin area. So, tail end. That is the more common presentation of a food allergy. Common causes of food allergies are chicken and beef.