My 3 year old dog has developed allergy type problems with his ears and skin. My vet recommended a fish and potato diet. This is not working. What else can I do?

Question

Hi Ed,

    Since you have had many dogs, I am in a way hoping you have seen this before. My GSD started to lose some of his fur around the edges of the ears, following with the skin thickening and cracking and becoming quite painful. I took him to the vets and he had his ears flushed, had a skin scrape done all coming back negative for bacteria, yeast or mange. She suggested he might have a food allergy so we started the elimination diet and he is on fish and potatoes. He's been on this for 2 months now, and although he is not worse, it has not healed either. Well the weird thing is, now my cocker has the same thing and she was switched at the same time. Vet still thinks its food related and suggested a zinc deficiency. Have you ever seen this in any of your dogs? The have absolutely no hot spots anywhere. He is 3 and my cocker is 4 1/2. I am in Fairbanks, AK and unfortunately we do not have a skin specialist up here.

    I also wanted to ask .....I am considering switching my dogs to a raw diet. Do you have a standard recipe you feed your dogs?

    Thanks for your help.
Nicole

Accepted Answer

I believe your vet is correct on one thing and that is if this problem is going to be fixed it will be by putting the dogs on an all-natural diet tailored to the dogs needs.

On the issue of what caused the problem, the first thing I would wonder is how many times have these dogs been vaccinated. If they have had the normal vet recommendation for vaccinations I would bet a lot of money that the dogs are suffering from vaccinosis (this is an allergy type problem - very similar to what you describe - that occurred because the dogs have a reaction to vaccinations.) The problems are not really caused by the actual antigens, but more a problem with the carriers that the antigens are delivered in.

So stop vaccinating your dogs. If I were you I would only vaccinate for rabies and if your state allows a 3 year vaccine for that, then this is all they get. Nothing else. If you work towards developing a healthy dog through diet, it will be able to fight off normal disease with its own antibodies.

My advice would be to get these dogs on an all-natural diet. Specifically the one that is explained in the little $9.00 book that we sell called Natural Nutrition for Dogs and Cats (you can find it in our list of books). This is how I feed my own dogs. I would also supplement their diet with YUCCA Intensive and the YEAST & FUNGAL DETOX (we also sell these products) I have had dogs with very similar conditions respond to this regime - it may take a couple of months but also think that it may work.

I am not a fan of the fish and potato diet that a lot of vets recommend. If you get the little book I spoke of above you can read why white potatoes are not good for dogs. Sweet potatoes and Yams are fine - but white potatoes are not good for them. I think that Iams or Eukanuba (I am not sure which) talked vets into using this diet. One of them even offer a commercial fish and potato diet. DUMB!!!!!!

The bottom line is I cannot stress enough how important the all-natural (no kibble) diet is for every dog. The sooner people get their dogs off these commercial dog foods then healthier their dogs will be. "YES" it is a little more expensive and "YES" it does take a little longer to prepare the food - but the benefits far outweigh the extra time and expense.