Interesting thing my vet told us tonight about dogs and allergies.

[mekasmom]

redhen--
what is your st. bernard's name? She looks so very much like our Daisy except that ours has fewer freckles around the muzzle.

Once you get the yeast cleared up in her ears, if you simply wash them out three or four times a week with alcohol, it won't regrow. Yeast is recurrent. You need to keep it under control to retard the growth. Vinegar will also prevent it. Just saturate a cotton ball and clean each ear a few times a week to prevent it from regrowing. Use a different cotton ball for each ear to prevent spreading any spores. If you don't work to retard the growth to prevent it, the ears will just get sore over and over between rounds of medication.

 

[chickerdoodle]

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Another good reason I feed EVO by Innova--they have their own plant and all is USA sourced foods.

 

[lemurchaser]

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Blood testing is considered the least accurate form of allergy testing. The only real way to see if they have a food allergy is to do an elimination diet/food trial for 8-12 weeks. Then to really tell what they are allergic to, you have to add foods back until symptoms return.

Obviously your dog does have allergies, but it may not be exactly what you think. How are you treating the environmental allergies?

I've found with my allergy dog that controlling the environmental allergies makes her food allergies better. I did the desensitization shots for her 53 environmental allergies, and now her beef allergy is better. She had the skin testing done by a veterinary dermatologist/allergist.

 

[emvickrey]

I had a St Bernard that we rescued when he was 6 months old and almost dead. The owners NEVER took him to the vet to find out what was wrong much less fed him what a dog like him was required to have. He was full of worms, you could see every bone he had, he stunk to high heavens and his skin was just slimy and he was very lethargic. After a worming and lots of food he started to come around. Bathing was near impossible since he was determined he wasn't getting one. We got rid of his worms and fattened him up but couldn't fix the skin problem. We had thought it was because he was starving. We had been fixing him his own meal everyday of oatmeal mixed with 3 eggs and either a chicken broth or beef broth. Poured over Pedigree for Large Breed. He would get a 1 gallon bucket of food a day. More if he ate all of that. But still the skin condition. WE took him to the vet and they did the scrape for mange. He was cleared of that and it was ruled out as an allergy. He was put on 1-20 MG of Predisone pill a day and antibiotics twice a day for 2 weeks then once a day for 2 more weeks to clear up all the infections all over his body. It cleared it all up. No more itcing, scratching and his hair came back and he didn't stink anymore.

I tried the benaddryl myself at first but it didn't work.

We would still give him the special food from time to time as a treat but he was up to normal weight, at least for a dog that started out so poorly.

I sent you a PM.

 

[emvickrey]

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PLEASE be very careful about feeding large breed dogs food that has been soaked in water. I would discontinue that immediately. I had Great Danes years ago and have alot of experience with giant breeds. Their stomach can turn on them when the dog food swells up. I lost one like that.

Put food out in a raised bowl and he'll eat when he's hungry. Taste of the Wild is expensive, but what is really in a bag of $15 dog food? Not much meat or quality food, that's for sure!

ETA: My first Dane was 240 lbs! He's been gone 16 years now and I still miss that guy

The latest advice is to not soak food, particularly if it is preserved with citric acid. It is also advised not to raise a food bowl as it can increase air intake in a gulper.

That being said, when my old Bloodhound bloated it was due to ingesting a large quantity of grass that balled up, and had nothing to do with feeding time.

St Bernards have a tendancy to bloat if they are too active right before or after eating a meal. Their intestines will turn. I did a little research when I had one trying to figure out the best way to take care of him.

 

[emvickrey]

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And one more thing, this was inherited. I do taxes and just so happened to do the ladies taxes that had owned the parents to the dog I rescued. Found out that she was getting rid of the parents because they had some kind of skin problem and they where stinking up the place. Her words folks not mine. I told her of the allergy and she said that one of the pups died from it's skin being infected. She didn't take any of them to the vet she said. I found out all this before I told her I had one of the pups. It happened to be my brother n law that had it before I did. I had finally talked him into letting me take him off his hands. He had a lab and they got fed 1 cup of food a day and had to fight over it. So we also had to deal with food aggression.

 

[emvickrey]

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So, So Wrong. The food for large breeds is for the fact that they grow so fast that their joints don't have time to adjust to their weight. This food is made for these dogs for a reason. It's not to make them row faster, it is to help their bodies, bones and joints grow sronger to accomodate for the large changes that are happening fast. My dog did great on Pedigree Large Breed. He didn't have a food allergy either it was seasonal allergy he had that a pill a day solved the problem and made him a healthy, happy dog. I put his pill inside a half a hotdog. He always looked for his hotdog first.

I started feeding him large breed food when he was about 8 months old and that with the mixture to but some meat on the bones that where sticking out. Around here a 40lb bag of Pedigree Large breed is about 23.00. We bought a new bag about every week to 10 days. In the summer he didn't eat so much because it really ins't the right weather here for a St Bernard, too hot. He just would lay in front of his fan in his house until night time. He loved the winters.

 

[KotaDVM]

Allergy testing with blood (Radioallergosorbent testing) is actually quite accurate. My clinic does it for $300 and takes only a few days for the results to arrive

 

[2468Chickensrgr8]

We had a black lab that chewed on his paws and legs....we did everything to find out what was causing it $$$$..this was before kids and debt payments .....mites testing/shampoos/different feeds / finally we had the allergy testing done ...same as humans almost ...scratch's on his stomach and it told us he was extremely allergic to rice..borderline chicken,certain grasses and certain tree pollens.Since he chewed in all four seasons the vet figured it was the rice ...we tried every kind of dog food ....that didnt have rice ...we tried different dog food again vet suggested a longer period of time on each food ...plus we tried allergy shots ....nothing helped ...or it could have been we started having kids.....we ended up putting him on a low dosage of pretnazone a steriod...which is not good for the kidneys...but Bear lived a good comfortable life into his teenage years ...

 

[halo]

I deal with veterinarians on a daily basis, not because of my own puppies, but at work, where we have over 200 horses. They do not know nutrition, because they did not study it. They only had a brief introduction to it in college. I love my small animal vet, but she pushes Science Diet, for obvious reasons. She doesnt push it on me; she knows better. My point being, get another opinion on your dog's allergies, preferably from a specialist in that field. I can not even begin to tell you the people I know who have cured various ailment and allergies by switching to raw food. My own older sheltie had rough skin and his hair was always coarse and falling out before I switched him off of kibble (and I fed him the best you can buy). He nearly dropped his entire coat and has grown in a beautiful shiny coat, and his skin issues cleared up. Not to mention they all have energy to burn. I now have to take them for a run around the property before we turn in for the evening so they can run laps around 5 acres I have in open fields. Otherwise they do it in my living room!