6mo Pup with Allergies or something else?

[raguilar]

I've had my pup Bogard, since he was 12 weeks old and up until a month ago he had been eating kirkland brand puppy food and he didnt have anything wrong except maybe an inconsistent stool (sometimes soft, sometimes hard). So after hearing about dogfoodanalysis.com and reading several recommendations by other boxer owners it seemed that Wellness would be a good choice and upgrade.

So we started mixing the Wellness Puppy Food with the Kirkland brand. I never had a second thought about it back then, but he would itch and lick parts of his body, but at that point we thought it was maybe his treats or shampoo. So we changed those accordingly, but it didnt seem to work. So as that was going on we were moving more and more closer to feeding him Wellness only in his food.

Then we noticed he had a bald spot in one area on his side. This was followed by constant sneezing and constant runny nose. This alarmed us, and at this point the only thing we have changed is his food fully to the Wellness brand. However, after doing so he now refuses to eat it at all. At this point we notcied his coat was shedding all over the place(though it is soft and shiny) and he had other red spots along his legs and he was now constantly licking and itching.

So we took him to the vet the other day, and they took a skin sample from the bald spot he had on the side, and was told he had demodex. So they gave me a topical lotion to put on that one spot and some chlorpheniramine. He doesnt seem to want to eat the wellness puppy food though, and we've been feeding him some canned dog food for the last day so that he would at least eat. We are thinking of the raw food diet, but we are not sure if we can keep up with the maintenance and want to find a kibble that Bogard likes but does not have an allergy to.

At the same time, it seems as though he's developing a kennel cough as he had one episode last night (dry cough and retching) for the first time, though he's had his bordatella vaccination recently, not sure if this is whats causing it or allergies as well?


So things I am planning to buy to help sooth his itching and boost immune system is vitamin c, fish oil, vitamin d, and apple cider vinegar......Any other advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[BxrMommieNAZ]

Personally I wouldn't give Vitamin D...did you mean Vitamin E? You're supposed to give Vitamin E with fish oil, but too much vitamin D can be very dangerous so I wouldn't supplement with that.

I'd also pick one food and stick with it. You're bouncing around WAY too much in foods IMO. If he truly is coming down with kennel cough, it isn't unheard of for them not to want to eat for a couple of days either due to the fact that they're just not hungry or due to the fact that they're stuffed up and can't smell their food. But I'd choose one food and stick with it, if he misses 1-2 meals it isn't going to kill him, he'll eat when he's hungry.

Unfortunately I think it's too hard to tell at this point what is causing what. You may want to try a limited ingredient diet such as Natural Balance to see if that resolves some of the issues, if not, I'd suspect it may be more of the other issues causing the problems.

Good luck to you, trial and error is what it is mostly about. My boy developed severe food allergies at 8 months old and it took me probably 2-3 months to figure out what many of them were but a good 6 months to figure out all of them.

 

[raguilar]

Thanks for the response. Yes you are correct I meant vitamin E. Regarding the food, we have only fed him two types, Kirkland Puppy since I've had him and then in the last month Wellness Puppy(since the Kirkland brand got bad reviews, and his stool was always hit or miss), after gradually mixing the two together for about two weeks. Ever since he's had the Wellness Puppy by itself however, he hasn't wanted to eat it at all, so we started incorporating the canned Wellness with the Wellness Puppy so he would at least eat something, but his symptoms didn't seem to be improving (it looks like it was getting worse) so we have stopped the Wellness Puppy kibble all together, and are now contemplating what we should feed him, so he doesnt keep itching,licking and scratching. Thanks for the recommendation on the Natural Balance, I will be sure to look for it.

Btw, are you in the phoenix area?