PSA for Dog Stores and Pet Food Manufacturers- Food Intolerance!

Hi Everyone, I’m Auggie and I’m here to deliver a PSA to dog stores and pet food manufacturers!

A little about me- I’m a 1.5-year-old golden doodle living my best life in Calgary- that is until recently when I developed food intolerance(s). UGH. Itchy, red inflamed ears are the worst- I’m normally such a happy, active guy and this really brings me down.

Unfortunately, my mom received some poor advice from our local pet store when she was trying to get help on what to feed me. I’m sure they meant well, but each time she went in saying I was itchy and getting recurrent ear infections, they just kept advising new foods to feed. Well, I’ve now eaten almost every protein there is and the only novel proteins are very expensive. It seems I do well on raw bison but I’m over 80lbs and mom and dad said I’d need to get a job to help pay for it. I’m a bit concerned about this - I only have 12 weeks of education and I played during some of my classes!

Another hiccup is that apparently bison is not always available. So, we are working on a new plan with Jody (apparently, she sees this scenario a lot and gets grumpy talking about it) but I wanted to pop on to say – PLEASE- dog store friends, when a customer comes in and their pup is showing signs of a food intolerance, go immediately to a new single source protein food and test it for minimum 7-8 weeks. No other proteins in treats during this time. Unless things get worse, don’t stop as it takes many weeks for our immune system to stop reacting to the original ‘enemy’.

If there is no improvement, then hydrolyzed foods work well as a temporary measure. It allows my gut and itching parts to calm and inflammation to come down. If you keep giving me new foods to try, during a time when my system is on high alert, I will more than likely react to that protein as well. Once my body has reacted, it has a very good memory and my immune system will remember it – maybe forever!!

While I’m ranting, I also wanted to say that pet food manufacturers who have upwards of 6 different proteins in their formulas are not helping! There are few food choices that are truly single protein. If the premise is to feed variety to avoid food intolerances in the future- it’s clearly not working! Plus, the original idea of not feeding the same protein daily was not meant to be -feed six or more proteins daily. The idea was to feed one protein – maybe for a few months, then rotate to a new protein for a few months so we aren’t getting exposure to the same proteins every single day. There is still no guarantee that we won’t develop a food intolerance but at least we have more options available if we do!

Even with some true rotation we don’t need so many different proteins. Chicken, beef, and one more is plenty- then our dog parents can rotate adding some fresh meat in the same protein, egg, maybe fish and some different fruits and veggies to our bowls to add variety.

If our owners start requesting and buying single source proteins and drive up the demand, maybe the big manufacturers will listen. They know that dog parents like to see ingredient lists that are full of variety, but I hope now you realize that they aren’t necessarily better for us.

Signed Auggie and all other four-legged friends who have food intolerances and might need to get jobs to help pay for their food.