Gracie is currently eating Diamond Natural's Chicken and Rice food. However, to see if Gracie's allergy issues may be food based, I'm planning to switch her over to a different food.
So, this is what they're eating now:
Prior to us adopting her, she was eating Pedigree, Purina One, and Beneful in a rotation of sorts. She will be 5 in October, and her skin issues popped up about a year and a half ago, I think. We've had her since May. She's been on hydroxizine (which doesn't help), I think we've done three rounds of antibiotics (which keeps her skin cleared up while she's on them), and in a last ditch effort to avoid oral steroids we tried a betagen topical spray, which prevented her skin from breaking out (she was still itchy), but it made her skin horribly dry. I finally had enough and started her on Temaril-P and we're currently trying to find the lowest effective dose. She's done really well on it, but I'd like to try a food and see if it is maybe a food issue. Allergy testing is a bit outside my budget right now. I'm sure part of it is a grass/pollen/mold issue as she would REALLY break out if she would walk through tall grass (and for a Dachshund, that's pretty much any grass), but we had a good solid freeze spell there for a bit and she was still having issues with itchiness/skin breaking out.
So. If I were to try a food, what would you all recommend? (Raw isn't an option.) It would be great if it were cheap enough to switch all of the dogs over to it, but I understand if that isn't possible.
Hello blackrose,
I don’t know where to start, Gracie’s had a rough time right from the beginning.
Bad food and steroids are a recipe for disaster... Gracie can’t be doing well.
The first thing you should do is visit a holistic vet in your area. They are experts in diet and drug therapy (steroids) and will tell you much of what I’m writing about. If there’s none around, here’s a list of
58 holistic vets in the U.S., most do phone consultations. Gracie needs this big-time.
The best diet you could feed Gracie is a biologically/species-appropriate raw meat diet. This could also be bought frozen, ready-made.
Wet food is next best followed by kibble following the above criteria.
Pet foods from Purina and Pedigree are among the absolute worst on the market. Most have no meat (Gracie is a carnivore) and the ingredients are a “who’s who†of what to avoid, some even being carcinogens.
Beneful is in the midst of a media nightmare, being accused of
poisoning dogs.
Here’s a site titled
443 Complaints and Reviews about Purina Beneful Pet Foods.
Diamond Natural's Chicken and Rice is not a good food. The good thing is that this food doesn’t have the dangerous ingredients that are in Purina and Pedigree. But the following ingredients should definitely be avoided in cat/dog foods:
Whole grain brown rice, white rice, cracked pearled barley, oatmeal, dried plain beet pulp, egg product, fish meal, salt.
Four of the first seven ingredients are
grains which are horrible for carnivores and cause allergies and a host of other problems. Holistic vets have said that grains cause most or all of the illnesses and diseases that pet owners pay vets thousands of dollars to cure.
Dried plain beet pulp - waste product, pure junk. Cheap filler/fiber causes sugar rush/addiction to food, hyperactivity and allergies.
May cause allergies, seizures, skin problems such as itching and excessive shedding, ear and eye infections and causes irritable bowel problems.
Dried beet pulp is known to be an artificial stool hardener. This is dangerous because when the stool remains in the colon too long, it exudes toxins into the blood stream, which could lead to a variety of short term (E.Coli) or long term health problems.
Sugar in beet pulp causes diabetes, hypoglycemia, weight gain, nervousness and fearful behavior, cataracts, ill health in general and a host of other symptoms and diseases.
Even if they say the sugar is "removed" this is not a good ingrfedient.
In nature, carnivores (dogs) do not eat dried beet pulp.
Egg Product - Cheap source of protein, waste product of egg industry, can contain undeveloped and diseased eggs, floor sweepings, etc. Not fit for human consumption. Found in low quality pet food.
Pet foods containing quality ingredients never, ever use dried egg product in any of their foods. They only uses fresh, whole eggs.
Fish Meal - Generic product name, waste not fit for human consumption. Often from from rancid fish, high mercury content.
This particular ingredient is anonymous, meaning it doesn’t even specify the fish source because the manufacturers don’t know what they are!
Made from unspecified parts of unspecified fish. The origin of the fish are definitely suspect, as they aren’t named. If the manufacturers wanted you to know what the sources were, they’d name them.
According to U.S. law (Coast Guard, Department of Homeland Security) fish meal MUST be preserved with ethoxyquin, a know carcinogen.
http://www.woodhavenlabs.com/fishmeal.html.
Plus, fish meal is often imported from China, which is rarely a good thing.
Salt – Added salt has no place in pet foods. Can lead to stomach ailments and pancreatitis. Dogs, especially large breeds who gulp too much water after eating salty food may develop a life-threatening condition called bloat during which the stomach fills with gas and twists, leading to painful death unless emergency medical help is received immediately.
Pet foods containing quality ingredients never use the above ingredients in any of their foods.
You will never find these ingredients in high quality commercially available pet foods, nor will you ever find it in healthy recipes for homemade pet meals. Where you’ll find it are in very affordable, highly processed, very low-quality pet foods.
Diamond sells a brand of grain-free foods but the problem is on their website I can’t find the ingredient list, which is unusual.
If you just want to feed kibble, the best is
Orijen. Contains up to eleven fish/meat ingredients, voted best pet food for three years in a row.
I’ll comment on steroids in another post.
My equation:
No annual vaccinations + no misuse or overuse of drugs (corticosteroids, steroids, antibiotics, etc.) + feeding a species [biologically] appropriate diet = Healthiest Cats/Dogs = No Vet Visits = Unhappy Vets, AVMA, AAHA & Big Pharma = Happiest Cats/Dogs = Happiest Pet Parents!
Best regards, Roger Biduk