Brittany Spaniel and allergies-what food do you feed?

What kind of food are you feeding? Lots of dogs have allergies to food, so you're probably correct there. I don't own a Brittany, but I just switched my Toller mix to Innova EVO and she loves it. Its supposed to be an excellent food, so I thought I'd give it a try. Here's a list of different kibbles that people recommended to me when I was looking for a new food (I was feeding Nutro, but wanted something much better) are the following:

- California Natural (I've heard that this is great for dogs with allergies, but I don't have first hand experience with it)
- Canidae
- Solid Gold
- TimberWolf Organics
- Innova adult dry
- Innova EVO
- Flint River Ranch
- Natural Balance
- Fromm
- Pinnacle

There are more, but thats all I can remember at the moment. These foods are not available in big pet stores like PetsMart, PetCo, etc. They're available in feed stores, and small, privately owned pet specialty stores. To be honest, I don't really like to feed kibble and would prefer to feed raw but that isn't possible at the moment so if I have to feed kibble, I'm going try and feed one of the best there is.

thanks so much for your reply. Today I gave her the Nutro for breakfast and she gobbled it up. I'll give it a couple weeks and see if it stops, or at least slows down, the itching. If it doesn't seem to help, I'll look for the Innova Evo that you mentioned.  Can I find that at PetSmart, too?  Thanks again.
-Jenny
(Bogey's mom)

I don't think any of the foods I mentioned above can be found at petsmart, but if you go to [linkhttp://www.naturapet.com]www.naturapet.com[/link] - the company that sells Innova - they have a store locator if you click on the 'stores' tab at the top of the page.

I have a cairn terrier with terrible allergies that seem to get worse the older she gets.  She is 9 now.  The only food (and I have tried Nutro when she was younger) that I have found that works is Canidae.  However, it may be difficult to find locally.  If you go to their website [linkhttp://www.canidae.com]www.canidae.com[/link] they have a store locator and I find that helpful.  Also dog.com sells it online.  They make biscuits and have canned food that my finicky little girl loves.  Good luck to you.  FYI, although I have had to resort to steroid shots a few times during the real bad spells, I feel they compromise their immune system and in the long run it is worse for the dog.  Just my opinion.

Callismom,
thanks for your help. I agree that the shots aren't the bests and should not be used indefinately - we've had the shots a few times and I don't want to do them again if I don't have to.  Yeah, Bogey is 8 this past summer and her allergies seem to have gotten worse as she's aged. But, hopefully, switching food will be a help.  If not, at least she's eating better food than she was before (Beneful).
 
Thanks again,
Jenny

Although I love EVO it is probably not the best choice for an allergy dog - too many protein sources.  You need to do an elimation diet to determine the root cause of the allergy if you do not want to spend money on allergy testing.  You should be able to search it and find a lot of info on elimination diets on here.
 
For kibble I would try either the California Natural if you can find it or Petco carries Natural Balance Duck & Potato which is a single protein/single carb food source.  There are others too that are single protein/carb available.
 
Good luck.

Please check with your vet, as my English springer had a similar problem and it didn't turn out to be food allergy at all, but flea dermititus.  Even if you pet doesn't have fleas on its body or in your home, they still can bite the dogs when they are out of doors.  They scratch and fuss at the bite sites which cause a chain reaction of licking and then more scratching etc.   My poor guy actually had licked spots bloody before we finally figured out what was going on with him. 
 
Also some dogs react to the topical anti flea products like Advantix etc.  Flea sprays, powders, even strong flea and tick collars can cause skin reactions.
 
For some reason, dogs who are predominantly white seem to have more problems with bugs biting and bothering than the darker colored animals
 
There are some organic products that you can spread in your grass from Ringer that will nock down the number of bugs to distress the animal, and you can use natural D-Limonene which bugs hate-or you can even make your own.  I also supplement during fleas season with brewers yeast and garlic.  It seems to help minimize the amount they are bothered by bugs, but you have to allow a few weeks for the supplement to help (It also helps to enhance coat and skin condition)  The tablet form is pretty cheap and it also comes in a powder that can mix in with food
if you dog doesn't do tablets well.  Some of the quality multivitamin supplements for pets include the brewers yeast and liver, but not in the same quantity as is recommended by weight if you go with the supplement that just has the brewers yeast and garlic.