How To Work Through Your Dog's Digestive Intolerances
Is your dog suffering from digestive intolerances? It can be challenging to see them in discomfort, but there are solutions to help alleviate their symptoms and improve their overall well-being.
Identifying the Problem
The first step in addressing your dog's digestive intolerances is to identify the root cause. The root issue to most intolerances is a condition called Leaky Gut.
Here's a simple break down of what leaky gut is:
- The intestines are naturally a mesh-like consistency that allow specific sized particles to go through into the blood stream, including, vitamin & minerals. Simply put this is how digestion is processed and and nutrients are absorbed.
- When leaky gut develops, which can happen because of a variety of situations like over vaccination, too many or certain medications are prescribed, poor food quality, etc., lesions develop in the mesh-like tissue and allow larger particles to seep from the intestines into the blood stream that aren't suppose to be there.
- When these larger particles enter the blood stream, the body turns on its histamine response to try and fight off the invader. When the histamine response is turned on, this is when we see the physical symptoms of rashes, itchy skin, cysts between the toes, digestive disturbances and more.
- These symptoms we see as digestive intolerances are usually a secondary reaction to leaky gut.
How to Address the Main Two Root Issues
Addressing their Trigger Foods
To address your dogs trigger foods, the foods that are actively causing their histamine response to switch on, I recommend utilizing a hair test from a company called 5-Strands. I have used this company many times with my own dog and family as well as with many clients while helping them work through healing their dog's digestive intolerances.
There is controversy on what types of tests are best to use but from my research and personal experience, we have had the best results from bio-feedback hair tests.
There is a difference between a true digestive allergy, like what is tested with blood tests, compared to intolerances, which is substance the body can not tolerate at the moment because of leaky gut. With intolerances, we can modify the body to a point where said food will not be disruptive to the body after we heal the digestive system.
So, first step is to take a hair sample test through 5Strands and send in the test via the mail. You will get emailed a multi paged detailed breakdown of your dogs intolerances with different foods ranging from a 0 - 3.
0 = no trigger
1 = slight trigger, feed in moderation
2 = medium trigger, remove if you can
3 = biggest trigger, remove food immediately
Most dogs that need this test will have many 2's and 3's. This can feel overwhelming but once you understand the foods your dog can and can not eat, right now, you can more easily pick out a food for them or better yet, make their food out of their safe foods. If you need support through this process, you can book a 1:1 Voxer support space with me and I can help you learn how to find appropriate foods, start making their food or anything else through this process. It can feel like a lot, but support is out there! We have to go through the fire to actually heal our dogs once and for all. You can book a 1:1 Voxer Support Space with me here.
We reached out to 5Strands to get a discount code for all of our clients since we use their tests so often. When you purchase a 5Strands test kit, use discount code "Furbalremedies" to get 10% off your order.
5Strands has many tests on their site but these are the two we often recommend to our clients:
If you feed kibble or pre-made food click HERE
If you feed raw or fully home cooked food click HERE
Start Healing the Intestines from Leaky Gut
We also need to start healing our dog's leaky gut through a process called leaky gut restoration. To to this we need to:
- Heal the lesions within the intestines
- Calm inflammation through the digestive system
- Repopulate beneficial bacteria to help absorb more nutrients
- Regulate digestion
Our Leaky Gut Reset Powder was formulated to check off all of these points in a gentle and effective way. This powder is intended to be added to your dog's meals daily. Start off on the lower end and feed Leaky Gut Reset Powder once daily and then up the amount to twice daily. This gives the digestive system some time to slowly increase the amount of beneficial bacteria in the digestive system which helps to decrease any discomfort with piling in too much probiotics at once. Symptoms of too many probiotics being given at once is gas and indigestion. If this happens, simply reduce the amount fed for a few days and slowly increase. These symptoms won't last, it is just the body trying to regulate a low bacteria count to being fed a high bacteria count too fast.
This is the true building block to finally healing your dogs digestive intolerances once and for all. We can support the symptoms, which I will get into below, but to actually heal digestive intolerances we need to heal the lesions in the intestines and get the digestive system balanced. Leaky Gut Reset Powder is often needed to be fed for 6+ months. True healing doesn't happen overnight.
How to Help Their Different Symptoms
Chronic Ear Infections
Ear Infections are a common symptoms of digestive intolerances. When an ear infection and the brown debris always comes back into the ears after cleaning, we call this a chronic ear infection. We can tell that our dog is having chronic ear infections because once we clean the ears the brown debris comes back. If the ear infection was fully gone, we wouldn't have to keep cleaning the ears. Most infections are deeper within the ear canal and when we use an effective solution it can help push the debris up into the outer ear, disinfect and loosen and clear out the debris.
Our Holistic Pet Earwash is the perfect solution to help loosen and remove debris while also being an antibacterial and antifungal to help kill off the overgrowth within the ear. Holistic Earwash is a great addition to your dogs new routine to help them feel more comfortable and remove the infected debris from their ears. Holistic Ear Wash can be used alone but to fully help your dog heal, it is best used with the Leaky Gut Reset Powder and figuring out your dog's trigger foods, too.
Common symptoms of ear infections is intense shaking of the head, scratching of the side of the head and brown debris within the ears.
Candida / Yeast Overgrowth
Candida is a common type of yeast that can become a co-infection with dogs who have digestive intolerances. This happens because the body doesn't have a strong defense mechanism (the digestive system) to fight off the "bad" yeast.
When we use herbs to fight off yeast, we need a two part system: kill system & flush system. There are herbs that can be beneficial for this process but my favorite system is using yeast fighting enzymes instead. Enzymes help to break down the outer layer of the yeast and help the body rid it, meaning, enzymes are used as a two-part system in and of itself.
Our yeast fighting enzymes, Candi-Gone, come in capsules and are intended to either be fed by:
- giving directly to your dog if they would eat a capsules that way
- wrapped in a tiny bit of food of choice, but not a lot
- opened up into your dogs bowl with a tiny bit of liquidy food like yogurt or apple sauce
When feeding yeast fighting enzymes, we want to feed them on an empty stomach or they will help digest the food, instead of their intended use of killing and flushing the yeast. This is why we can feed them with a tiny bit of food, but not with their meal.
Full Body Comfort
Furbal Remedies Allergy Relief Extract is specifically formulated to target the current histamine reaction happening within your dog plus calming inflammation and balancing our the immune response. It contains natural ingredients such as nettle leaf, turmeric root and turkey tail mushroom. This extract can help alleviate allergy symptoms of scratching, itching, sneezing, rashes while also helping to calm inflammation within the digestive system and on the body from scratching. Allergy Relief Extract can be used by itself for more comfort but is best when used with Leaky Gut Powder and adjusting your dog's food. If you don't, it will be like your dog taking a step forward and two steps back every time they eat.
Hot Spots
Hot spots can be another secondary infection to digestive intolerances. They are itchy, circular areas on your dogs body that are itchy, wet in appearance and uncomfortable. They are localized skin inflammation + bacterial infection. With hot spots we don't want to put a salve or balm on them. They are already wet and moist, so we don't want to put more moisture on the hot spot. We want to dry out the hot spot with an added touch of antibacterial action. Furbal Remedies Cool & Dry Spray is the perfect solution to calm the inflammation, cool the heat from the hot spot, dry out and heal the skin.
Just remember, your dog didn't get to this point with their intolerances over night, so they won't heal over night. This means you need to have patience and understanding that you dog's body is working on truly healing once and for all. We are not covering up symptoms or suppressing the immune system.. we are working on healing your dog from the inside out.
You got this!