He could be intolerant to any one of the many processed ingredients in commercial dog foods.

Commercial dog foods are often the cause of food intolerance. I'm guessing your vet didn't tell you that when selling you their over priced prescribed diet???

With a raw diet you will know exactly what you are feeding him and it will be in a natural form, not processed or altered by cooking.

I'm not saying it's the only way to go, but it is a viable option.

When I was a kid we had a dog that was intollerant to commercial tinned dog food, before kibble, vitalin etc; was easily available, she'd get big sore patches all over her like an eczema and was prescribed steriods. The vet tried every test he knew to find out what was wrong so my dad fed all our dogs and cats on raw food. The jack russel who had the allergy (she also had problems with pollen and would rip her fur out where it had touched her skin) didn't have any more problems from her diet, she lived to a ripe old age as well.

Thank you, was begining to feel like everyone thought I was talking rubbish!

We put our cats onto raw after the vet couldn't sort their diahorrea out. We told the vet of our plans to feed them raw and he advised against it at least until they were better but he wasn't happy about us doing it at all. People, even vets don't seem to realise the benefits of feeding a species appropriate diet.

Gave us a list of reasons not to feed raw, all of which I already knew were rubbish from researching on the net, but he scared us enough to put us off for a bit.

After another week I got fed up of his advice not working and started with the raw, the improvement was almost instant and very clear to see, they have bags more energy, stools are now solid and their eyes have even cleared up too.

We were already feeding Milo raw and there was a noticable difference with him too, he seemed to be out growing the puppy stage but with raw he has all his "puppy energy" back.

The pups went straight onto raw when we got them too!

Has he had faecal tests done? These and blood tests will help determine allergies and then will be a good starting point to figure what will be good for him dietary wise. Could also be an underlying parasitic/bacterial problem which the analysis will pick up on.

Has he been wormed recently as well?

Thanks for replies AJShep and BlackCat. i didn't mean to sound dismissive, it's just that no one has ever mentioned raw diets before and my experience has been that giving Alfie a big variety of foods in the early days did him no favours. I would try, but all the advice here seems to be not to keep changing the diet. He is mostly perfectly perky in himself, apart from when he had the bacterial infection which made him quiet and lethargic. But he must be in fairly constant discomfort.
He has been wormed with Stronghold regularly since we had him and he has had faecal tests, that was how they picked up the Campylobacter. We haven't had blood tests yet but that is their next suggestion. I have been to the vets with him 12 times over the last 6 months.....

I am now so confused, I hardly know what to do...... but thanks for your support. This is the first time I have had any support with it at all really.

Hi there i too was at a loss with our pup when we got her but she had the runs from day 1 and we did the wrong thing too by changing her food as we thought what we had bought was better than the stuff she had been fed , we too had tests done at the vets and in the end it was food intollerance . we had tried several foods all advertised as being very good !!!!!! then our vet put her on Royal canin hypoallergenic for 7 weeks and i must say it worked wonders after a couple of days it got better , all this after at least 6 weeks of runs . After the hypo food we put her on to Royal Canin Lab junior and all remained well . I must confess though if you resaerch dogs foods its scary although its a prescribed diet and sold by vets its made by Proctor and gamble who also make about 5 other well named dog foods that quite honestly i now ouldnt feed any dog . I also discovered R/C had added preservatives that have been banned from human consumption because it has links to Cancer !!!! ok for dogs though !!!! ????? Vets get paid for stocking the food and recommending it . I cant nock the fact that it got Daisy well again but i would probably give raw a go it cant do any more harm there is plenty of advice on the net as to how to feed and what to feed so give it a whirl .

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It all depends what type of intolerance the dog has to be honest but with raw you know what you're feeding and can remove anything from the diet that causes problems.

Chances are though it'll be something that is only found in commercial dog foods or that arises from the processing of foods so a raw diet of any kind would more than likely sort the problem out fairly quickly. Presuming the vets diagnosis of a food intolerance is the problem.

Like Andrea said it won't do any harm.

If you do decide to feed raw make sure you do lots, and I really do mean lots, of research before you start. If you decide on that route drop me a message and I will direct you to some good websites and answer any questions you might have!

Actually Aj you could look at this for me you may have read on other threads i tend to feed raw at weekends for the girls as this is all i can manage at he mo as i dont have enough freezer space lol what do you think of thier menu from today they had for dinner , 200 gms of beef its defrosted and a mix of meat and fatty bits they also had a couple of raw carrots chopped in it and a courgete each , i also gave them a hand full each of brown part cooked rice in it in your opinion was this ballanced .??

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In my opinion, no! You're missing the vital ingredient of bones!! A raw diet fed without bones will result is sloppy stools and poor nutrition. Bones also provide chewing and grinding activity to help maintain strong, healthy teeth.

I feed muscle meat and bones everyday, organ meat 1-3 times a week and homemade vegetable "puree" 2-3 days a week. They get carrots as treats, Milos are cut up as he won't munch a whole one.

I don't feed any grains, even though rice is a good quality grain, potatoes are the best source of carbohydrate to feed, which I include in the vege "puree". Rice won't do any harm but it's not part of a "true" natural raw diet.

Carrots are a brilliant vegetable to feed, not sure about courgette's nutritional value to be perfectly honest!

You'll find people have differing opinions on what is the right way to feed raw, but the way I look at it is this:

Dogs have the same digestive system they had years ago when they were living in the wild. So start off with the prey model and feed as close to that as possible. Dogs in the wild are going to eat mainly meat and bones from prey. They may or may not eat the stomach contents of herbivores. They are only going to eat potatoes, berries etc if they can't kill to eat, so that should make up a small part of the overall diet.

Something I found interesting to read was that you could breed any breed of dog with a wild wolf and get healthy, fertile offspring, even a chiuahua. I think that shows how alike our pet dogs are to wild wolfs.

What food do you feed your labs during the week?

Pero labrador i can only get it off the web site it cost me £30 for 15 kilo bag they have 300 gms a day as im trying too get Jessie to lose some weight as she was very heavy when we got her and Daisy to maintain hers as she has a dodgy elbow . they get 1000 mgs a day of glucosamine for the joints on recomendation of our vet and to be honest since giving it to both of them Daisy rarely limps at all . I forgot to say that most weekends they get a knuckle end bone from same butcher its all organic meat he does and they do gnaw it away to nothing vitually and then we get white poo,s for the next few days lol . I do put potato in too but we never had them yesterday with our dinner so i never did them any so i opted for rice , the food they get during the week is based on Salmon and brown rice has added glucosamine reduced fat ( as for the Lab lol) and all the vits ect , i researched the food and as we all know its a case of finding the best of a bad bunch , i was quite impressed with the range they did they guarantee the chicken they put in some of the other foods to be of Grade A human consumption quality and they also have an organic one with certificates from the soil association .

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