Allergies? need advice

[BasilStreets]

About 6 months ago I stopped feeding kibble in a kind of last ditch effort to get Streets's colitis under control. I started using a pre-make base with which to make food at home. Amazingly with in 12 hours of switching his stool was normal and has been ever since. This is really incredible since I'd been trying to manage the colitis for 2 1/2 years with little success.
In the past couple of weeks though Streets has started seriously chewing his feet. The only things that have changed are I got a new kind of cookies, which have a bit or corn in them, but I can't imagine that is actually enough for a reaction (or am I wrong?) and I used Advantage on the dogs for the first time (again, doesn't seem like it would be responsible for foot chewing....).
So I'm wondering if anything in this list of ing. sticks out as a possible allergen. The ing. are not really in order, but it will give you an idea of what's in there.
I'm starting to feel like a switch to a totally raw diet is inevitable.

Â*iNGREDIENTS: Organic beef, free range chicken Human grade stone ground: whole brown rice, amaranth seed, millet seed, sprouted barley, ground apple, pure Acadian sea kelp, wheat germ (toasted), whole ground carob, goat milk powder,Â* calcium carbonate (poultry shell), whole ground almonds, parsley, ginger root, garlic, marjoram, & basil Carrot, Sweet Potato, Broccoli, Barley Greens, Spinach, Watercress, Lettuce, Celery, Parsley, Beets, Apple, alfalfa, olive oil, organic eggs.

 

[Maci-May]

Maci has many allergie and wheat and corn are just 2 of them...

 

[gmacleod]

I would be most inclined to suspect the treats or the advantage. Yes, small amounts of a substance can cause a reaction if the dog is severely allergic. And yes, some dogs do have adverse or allergic reactions to chemicals (advantage is chemicals).

You can test the theory by cutting out those treats and seeing if things don't clear up. If they do, then you'd need to see if it it recurs next time you put advantage on him.

As for the food... The only thing in there that is a common allergen is beets. Not that he can't develop an allergy to something (anything) else. He can, of course, but the beets are the only ingredient in your food that is a common allergen.

If cutting out the new treats, and not applying advantage for a while makes no difference though, then it may be worthwhile going to a raw diet to work out what is problematic and what isn't. The biggest advantage there is that you control precisely what he eats - by single ingredients, so it's relatively easy to identify any problematic ones and avoid using them.

The other thing you should consider is that many (if not most) allergies are actually environmental. Can you think of anything in his environment that's likely to be causing the problem? Pollen, dust, detergents and grass are relatively common allergens. I'm afraid that allergy testing is the only real way of determining what environmental things are problematic though (especially in the case of pollen and dust).