Myth v Fact: Positive Training

There is a fierce debate raging in the dog training world between traditional dominance and punishment-based trainers and the positive training movement.

(from Victoria Stilwell’s “Positively”)
https://positively.com/dog-training/myths-truths/myth-vs-fact/#PositiveTrainersDontBelieveDiscipline

Common Dog Training Myths:

There is more than one way to train a dog.
Positive training methods don’t work on ‘red zone’ dogs.
Dogs only ‘respect’ leaders who assert their ‘dominance.’
Positive trainers do not believe in discipline.
Training a dog with food is basically bribery.
Positive training stops working when you stop giving treats.
Aggressive dogs are trying to be dominant.
Dogs are pack animals like wolves and are hell-bent on becoming the ‘alpha’ or ‘top dog’ over their owners.
Dominance training is safer because it works faster.
Positive training is always slow.
Positive training and dominance training are both equally effective.
Positive trainers treat dogs like human kids
‘Alpha Rolls’ make dogs calmly submissive.

MYTH: There is more than one way to train a dog.

FACT: This is the trickiest one to answer, because technically speaking, this is true. You can train positively or you can train with intimidation. (Within these two approaches, there are a lot of different tools and methods you can use.) What you have to ask yourself, though, is what kind of person do you want to be and what kind of relationship do you want with your dog? Punishment does work for a while – if you poke, yank, shock, kick or hit your dog, he will probably stop what he is doing, but trust will be broken, and if you continue to intimidate him, he may well bite. If you want to have an emotionally balanced and confident dog that trusts you and wants to be with you, the positive path is the one you should take.

So yes, there are different ways to train your dog, but until certain punishment-related tools and techniques are (correctly) deemed as illegal, it is left up to your individual moral compass to guide which path to follow when building a relationship with your dog.

The simple question is this: do you want your dogs to follow you because they want to, or because they are scared of what will happen to them if they do not? There is no place in the healthy, balanced dog/human dynamic for macho, intimidating behavior, and only positive training methods create and foster relationships with your dog based on mutual trust, respect and love rather than pain, fear and intimidation.

MYTH: Positive training methods don’t work on ‘red zone’ dogs.

FACT: Actually, this is where positive reinforcement methods are at their most powerful. Using positive training to treat ‘red zone’ or severely aggressive dogs is not only a safer option, but a much more effective one.

Positive training doesnot only work on small dogs with minor obedience issues – it is also by far the most effective way to treat severe anxiety and ‘red zone’ aggression cases. On It’s Me or the Dog, her other shows and in private practice, Victoria and other positive trainers around the world successfully rehabilitate big, powerful dogs suffering from severe aggression issues on a regular basis. But instead of fighting aggression with aggression (a game-plan that usually results in someone eventually getting bitten), a qualified positive trainer is able to truly change the way dogs feel for the rest of their lives using force-free methods – not just the way they’re acting at that moment.

Aggression in dogs needs to be handled sensitively and with compassion. Aggressive dogs are under stress and this stress needs to be managed so that the dog can feel better while the trainer finds the cause of the aggressive response and then works with the dog and the owner to modify it. Instead of using forceful or punitive techniques, a dog is guided by using positive techniques that help him see a perceived threat or potential loss of a valued resource in a different light. For some dogs this can be achieved relatively quickly but for others it can take a while, which is why it is important to see every dog and every situation as unique.

MYTH: Dogs only respect leaders who assert their ‘dominance’.

FACT: Well, dogs do need effective leadership from us, but the whole idea of dominance is a very complex and widely misunderstood concept which almost always takes dog owners down the wrong path when applying it to their dogs’ behavior.

Instead of looking to become alpha, top dog or pack leader over us, most dogs simply want safety, security and those things which generally make them feel good. They know we’re not dogs, and in fact they prefer us to provide effective, non-combative and punishment-free leadership. Contrary to popular belief, we do not need to try and act like what we think an alpha wolf would do when dealing with our dogs, but rather provide consistent, reward-driven learning which helps guide dogs into making the right choices – the choices we want them to make in order to succeed in our strange domestic world.

So do not get caught up in whether or not you or your dog has the upper hand in the battle for dominance. Focus instead on building a common language, rewarding the good behavior, redirecting the bad behavior, and instilling confidence in your dog to live successfully within the boundaries that you set for your household.

MYTH: Positive trainers do not believe in discipline.

FACT: Positive does not mean permissive.

Most positive trainers do use discipline, in the form of vocal interrupters, time-outs, ignoring negative behavior, or removing something that the dog wants, all of which are used to guide the dog into making the right choices rather than forcing it to behave out of fear. In technical terms, such discipline is called “negative punishment” because it removes (negative = ‘minus’ or ‘less’) something that the dog likes, such as your attention, access to you, or a favorite toy. This is by no means to be confused with the term “positive punishment,” which, though it includes the word “positive,” is defined as punishing the dog by adding something to the equation that the dog does not like (corrections, physical force, or intimidation).

Dominance-based discipline uses force and hard punishment such as ‘alpha rolls’ (when a dog is forcibly laid on its back and side and held down until it ‘submits’), ‘biting’ (where a person uses the tips of their fingers bunched together that are poked into a dog’s side in order to simulate a ‘bite’ that a dog would use to reprimand another dog), foot pushes (where a person uses the side of their foot or heel to prod or kick a dog when it is misbehaving), hanging (where a dog is hung by his collar until his air supply is cut off), and shock collars that deliver an electric shock when the dog misbehaves.

Anyone can get a dog to behave using punitive training but it takes a real understanding of dog psychology to use discipline effectively without inflicting pain or fear and to guide a dog into not repeating negative behavior while maintaining trust between dog and person.

MYTH: Training a dog with food is basically bribery. A dog should never be bribed into doing something for food but should obey their owners because they want to make their owners happy.

FACT: Those who claim that food is bribery do not understand how powerful using food in training is.

Food has the power to help a fearful or anxious dog overcome his fears. When food is presented to a fearful dog in the presence of a stimulus that causes that fear or anxiety, the smell and taste of the food bypasses all other parts of the brain and goes straight to the brain’s emotional center, the amygdala. Instead of feeling fear, the brain begins to be overcome with not just the pleasurable feelings that food gives but also allows the dog to focus more on the good sensation and less on the negative emotion. Food is incompatible with fear and is therefore a valuable tool in modifying a dog’s fear, anxiety and stress.

Positive training isn’t just about using treats though. I encourage people to use whatever reward motivates their dog, whether it’s praise, play, toys or ‘life rewards’ like going for a walk or getting a belly rub.

The bottom line here is that a reward that motivates a dog to learn is a great training tool because learning not only makes a dog more confident and able to live successfully in a domestic environment, it also encourages mutual understanding that increases the human/animal bond. That is not bribery.

MYTH: Positive training stops working when you stop giving treats.

FACT: Any reward that is used to motivate the dog to learn has to be of high value until the dog is responding reliably. When training positively, once this has been achieved, the high reward, such as food, is only used intermittently. That means the dog doesn’t get rewarded with the food every time he responds to a cue, but the next time he responds he might just get it. Then the next couple of times he responds, a lower-value reward such as praise will be used, but the dog continues to respond.

In fact, intermittent reinforcement like this actually makes a dog respond faster and more reliably because it is based on the same theory that makes a slot machine in a casino so addictive. This is how dogs really learn so even if you don’t give a food reward every time, the possibility of the potential of one in the future makes a dog work much harder.

MYTH: Aggressive dogs are trying to be dominant.

FACT: This is very rarely true.

Contrary to what many believe, dogs are not out to achieve world domination! Dominance theory relies heavily on the idea that if a dog is being aggressive, controlling or just behaving badly then it must be trying to dominate the owner. While domination does happen in the canine world, it shows a true misunderstanding of dog behavior to label everything a dog does as an attempt to be top dog or boss over a human.

If a dog is exhibiting controlling behavior in or out of the home, chances are that he hasn’t been taught how to behave appropriately. If a dog hasn’t been taught how to function in a domestic environment he will behave in the only way he knows how. He might control access to food, space or furniture by aggressing at a human only because he is insecure and hasn’t been given the confidence to know that there is no need to guard these resources. Dogs guard and control for fear that they will lose access to their comfort and what makes them feel good and not because they want to dominate humans and the household, yet for so long these kinds of behaviors have been grossly misunderstood.

MYTH: Dogs are pack animals like wolves and are hell-bent on becoming the ‘alpha’ or ‘top dog’ over their owners.

FACT: Dogs are not wolves, and most of the common thinking which assumes that we should base our understanding of how dogs think and act on wolves is based on flawed and misguided research which has been renounced by the very scientists who first presented the idea.

There are thousands of years and many generations removing dogs from wolves both genetically as a species and practically as our domestic companions. What’s more, even the idea of ‘top dog’ or ‘alpha’ status in the wolf world has been wildly misunderstood and is a dangerously misguided way of thinking about our dogs. Dogs actually offer submission to one another rather than aggressively staking out claims of superiority, and the way wolves interact has very little bearing on how we should assume our dogs think, feel and act.

MYTH: Dominance training is much safer because it has quicker results.

FACT: This is a flawed and dangerous way to think. This ‘quick fix’ idea demeans a dog’s experience and is psychologically unachievable.

A dog’s emotional brain is wired in exactly the same way as that of a human. So his physiological response to emotion is the same as ours, which means that our bodies have the same internal reaction to emotions such as fear, joy, excitement etc. When a dog is suffering from anxiety or fear that provokes a negative behavior such as aggression, then it is dangerous and fundamentally wrong to assume that by punishing a dog, the dog is fixed.

If a human has an anxiety problem, chances are they will seek out therapy to help them. That therapy does not work in one session (and certainly didn’t in the past when therapies were punitive). It takes time to work through an anxiety and change the way a human feels about something.

It is exactly the same for a dog because time is needed to really change the way a dog feels emotionally. Punitive training just puts a band aid on the problem but the dog still feels the same inside if not more insecure for the punishment he has received for ‘behaving badly’.

MYTH: Positive Training Is Always Slow

FACT: This is not true. People who have yet to experience it are routinely amazed at how quickly the power of positive reinforcement transforms dog behavior. Positive training actually changes the way a dog feels, thus altering his tendency to make the ‘wrong’ choice. Once a dog learns to think for itself within the guidelines that we set for him, everyone is in for a far more harmonious, balanced and happy life experience.

That’s not to say that more serious fear and anxiety-based behaviors don’t take much longer to get under control, because they often do. But which would you rather have: a quick solution based on ‘patching over’ the underlying issue with the huge risk that the bandage will likely come unstuck, or a solution that takes longer because it addresses what’s really causing the problem and is far more likely to truly change the dog’s behavior forever.

MYTH: Positive training and dominance training are both equally effective.

FACT: There are many great training methods and many different effective and humane ways to train dogs, but all of those methods fall under one general behavioral philosophy – positive reinforcement.

For some reason, though, a lot of people still don’t like hearing trainers say that it’s not ok to train your dog using any method that ‘works’. Using that heavy-handed logic, it would be ok do just about anything to a dog if it meant they stopped misbehaving right then and there. Simply, there are more effective, safe and humane ways of doing things. There are many fantastic methods and approaches that can be used to effectively change dogs’ behavior, but all of those methods have one thing in common – a solid basis in the general principles of positive reinforcement and force-free training.

MYTH: Positive trainers treat dogs like human kids.

FACT: Treating animals like they are human beings is called anthropomorphizing, and good positive trainers do not do it. In fact, many of the common behavior issues that Victoria and other positive trainers are regularly called in to fix stem from the owner’s tendency to anthropomorphize their dogs, and the first step in such situations is to convince them to stop treating their dog like a child.

At the same time, modern behavioral science has shown us that the dog’s emotional brain is wired very similarly to a human’s – dogs have emotions, just not with a human’s level of complexity and ability to extrapolate. Comprehending this is the first step toward understanding our dogs: seeing the world from their point of view.

Furthermore, studies have shown that the most socially mature dogs have an intelligence and ability to problem-solve and understand words and gestures similar to that of a two-year-old human child.

In short, most of us now raise our children using all the same positive reinforcement philosophies at play in positive dog training, but that does not mean that we should equate the two or treat them exactly the same.

MYTH: ‘Alpha Rolls’ make dogs calmly submissive.

FACT: The complete opposite is actually true.

The so-called ‘alpha roll,’ – a popular punishment technique used by dominance trainers – is the practice of restraining the dog on its back or side until it ‘calms down.’ It may indeed appear that the dog has become quiet and relaxed, but the dog has actually employed an instinctive survival tool we call ‘shut down.’ This response is used by animals to appease aggressors and attempt to avoid any further violence. If the dog remains still or ‘shuts down’ until the aggressor moves away, he is more likely to be safe.

Even if a restrained dog’s demeanor appears calm on the outside, research has proven that forced submission or restraint raises a dog’s stress levels, due to a release of cortisol into the dog’s bloodstream. Cortisol is a hormone that is produced in the adrenal gland and released in response to stress. Elevated stress inhibits learning and compromises a dog’s ability to function normally.

To the untrained eye, a restrained dog’s stillness may indicate that he is calm, but an internal battle is being fought as the dog tries to cope with what is, in essence, a stressful episode brought on by of an act of physical violence by a human, in which the dog is the victim. Any ‘success’ that may be achieved when using dominance techniques on even a mildly aggressive dog is generally just a case of the dog’s ‘shutting down,’ suppressing his true instincts, and masking valuable warning signals.

Trying to ‘put the dog in its place’ usually results in a short-lived quick fix, merely postponing the inevitable negative response once the dog feels threatened again. This delayed reaction can easily resurface at the worst possible moment, such as around children or in public.

Elimination Round: Dogs with suspected food allergies

Will Your Allergic Dog Benefit From a Food-Elimination Trial?

Dogs whose allergies are suspected to be related to their diet will benefit from a food-elimination trial.

By Cynthia Foley (The Whole Dog Journal March 2015)

When your dog itches, you know it. That relentless licking, scratching, chewing – anything he can do to relieve the itch. He seems obsessed, and he probably is. Whatever you do, don’t ignore this problem (as if you could!). Incessant scratching and chewing may indicate food allergy. He’ll constantly tear into any place on his body that he can reach with his teeth or claws. You may see ugly hair loss. Until you find the cause, this problem will go from bad to worse.

Yes, persistent skin irritations can also be due to something else, including dry skin, hormonal issues, liver disease, fungal infections, drug reactions, pain, boredom, anxiety, or a combination of any of those! For this reason, if your dog has chronic itching, it’s always worth a trip to the vet to rule out some of these potential causes.

But the fact is, 70 percent of canine skin conditions are allergy-related – and most of those are due to flea allergy and/or environmental allergens, such as pollen, mold, or dust mites. If the dog has fleas, or if his symptoms have a seasonal component, it’s likely that environmental allergies are his primary problem.

But an estimated 10 to 15 percent of the dogs who suffer from allergies are allergic to their food, or at least some ingredient or ingredients within their food. Many owners assume that a dog with a chronically upset stomach has food allergies, but many dogs who have chronic upset tummies may have a food intolerance; if there is no hypersensitive immune response, it’s not an allergy. (That said, one can use an elimination diet to help determine whether the dog is intolerant of certain foods, too.)

The primary symptom of food allergies, just as with inhaled or contact allergies, is itching. Dogs with food allergies might also show gastrointestinal signs (vomiting and/or diarrhea), or secondary infections, such as chronic otitis (ear infections), but they might not; non-seasonal (year-round) itching might be their only symptom.

A Diagnostic Diet
Puppies aren’t usually born with food allergies. These hypersensitive immune responses tend to build up over time, usually appearing between the ages of 1 and 3 (but they can appear late in life, especially if the dog has been on the exact same diet for years and years). The most common food allergens in dogs are protein sources – especially beef, dairy products, wheat, chicken, egg, and soy – but the cause may also be a carbohydrate, a preservative, a dye, or anything else in the food.

While there are skin and blood tests that can be performed for allergies, they’re expensive and have only a 60 percent accuracy, frequently returning both false positives and false negatives. No wonder many veterinarians consider them useless! Although all you’re going to hurt by trying them is your wallet, a far better solution is an “elimination diet.”

Better described as a “restricted diet,” this limited-fare menu will help you both identify the foods that cause an allergic (hypersensitive) reaction in your dog, as well as find foods that can be fed to him without causing an allergic response.

The first step in a food-elimination trial is to think hard about all the types of food you have fed to your dog, and then gather the ingredient lists for all commercial foods the dog has received, or foods you have included in his home-prepared diet. Write down (or list in a spreadsheet) all of the ingredients in the foods your dog has eaten. While it may be difficult to recall (or impossible, in the case of dogs who were adopted as adults) every food a dog has eaten in his lifetime, all of the ingredients in the diets that the dog has received most recently should be included on the list.

You now have a working list of the ingredients you will avoid when selecting foods for the dog’s elimination diet.

“Novel” Ingredients
The goal for the first stage of the trial is to find ingredients that the dog has never received, in order to find some to which he is not allergic. You will then start him on a diet of these “novel” ingredients, in hopes that his itching reduces and then stops, indicating he is no longer eating something to which he is allergic, and that he is not allergic to any of the novel ingredients.

If his itching and other symptoms of allergy stop, you can begin adding other ingredients back into his diet, one at a time. If the itching recurs, the most recently added ingredient is then put onto your dog’s list of forbidden foods.

Ideally, an elimination diet initially consists of just one protein source and one carbohydrate source, neither of which appears on the list of foods your dog has previously eaten.

“I recommend a limited-antigen diet: one protein, one carbohydrate,” says Eileen Fatcheric, DVM, co-owner of the Fairmount Animal Hospital in Fairmount, New York. “The foods should be ‘novel,’ meaning the dog has not eaten them before.”

In order to ensure the food is new (novel) for your dog, your veterinarian may recommend some seemingly crazy cuisine. Ingredients often recommended for elimination diets include:

Proteins
Rabbit
Venison
Duck
Buffalo/Bison
Kangaroo

Carbohydrates
Pumpkin
Oats
Barley
Quinoa
Chickpeas (also a good protein source)

Keep in mind that this initial, “one novel protein and one novel carb” diet is being used in hopes that you have eliminated whatever your dog has been reacting to in his diet, so that he stops itching, his skin clears, and any other allergic symptoms he has cease. Once he is totally asymptomatic – and this may takes weeks – you can add one ingredient to his diet for a few weeks. If he starts itching, that ingredient gets added to the “forbidden” list, and you retreat to feeding the diet that didn’t make him itch, wait until all is calm again, and then try adding yet another ingredient.

The ingredients you choose to use for this initial trial should be new to your dog, but readily available to you and affordable. Some of the more unique proteins may be more available in frozen, dehydrated, or canned form than fresh.

Decades ago, beef was the most common animal protein used in commercial dog foods, and so when a dog appeared to have a food allergy, most veterinarians would recommend a lamb and rice food. These ingredients were rarely seen in commercial foods at the time and, therefore, were novel to most dogs. The combination was even dubbed “hypoallergenic” – a misnomer for any dog who is allergic to lamb or rice! Of course, when food-allergic dogs improved on these foods, they became popular; soon, even owners whose dogs didn’t have allergies tried them, and more companies began offering foods that contained lamb and rice. The upshot is that within a relatively short time, both lamb and rice lost that all-important “novel” characteristic for many dogs.

The same phenomenon is making it even more difficult for dog owners to find foods that contain ingredients that are novel for their dogs. The popularity of grain-free foods, and their inclusion of potatoes, sweet potatoes, peas, and chickpeas (as replacement carbohydrate sources for grains) means that many dogs have been fed these formerly rare (in dog foods) carbs, eliminating those ingredients from the pool of potential “base” ingredients for the allergic dog’s preliminary restricted diet.

Other owners may have fed novel proteins to their dogs in foods that appealed to them for reasons other than food allergies – just to provide the dog with variety, for example.
We suggest that owners avoid feeding foods that contain uncommon proteins to their dogs, so they are available for use in the dog’s diet if he should develop food allergies later.

Commercial Foods, Home-Prepared Option, Home-Prepared Option, Serving the New Food, Challenging

Commercial Foods for an Elimination Trial?
Today, a visit to any specialty pet-supply store will reveal that any number of companies offer “complete and balanced” foods that contain uncommon proteins such as rabbit, duck, venison, bison, and even kangaroo. Further, many of them are formulated to contain only one type of animal protein – what the makers often call “limited-ingredient” formulas. Those products seem ideal for feeding a food-allergic dog, right? Well, it depends.

A commercial food is most likely to work in an elimination diet if it contains just one novel (to your dog) protein and one novel (to your dog) carb. However, if it contains (for example) one novel ingredient (say, rabbit) and chicken – which is the most common animal protein in commercial dog food today – it probably won’t work for use in an elimination diet. You have to look past the “headline” ingredients to see whether a food might also contain ingredients your dog has consumed many times; it doesn’t matter if a food is called “Brand X Bison and Barley Dog Food” if it also contains beef and rice.

There is also the matter of the potential for cross-contamination at the pet-food manufacturing facility. A dog who is highly allergic to chicken, for example, may react to a food that contains no chicken, but was made on manufacturing equipment that was inadequately cleaned after running a batch of food that contained chicken.

Also, even if it’s a single-protein, single-carb “limited ingredient” commercial diet, any “complete and balanced” food will necessarily contain more ingredients than a home-prepared diet that contains only the protein and carb sources. While it’s quite rare that the dog’s allergy is to a preservative or herb or fiber source in the food, the fewer ingredients that are used in the trial diet, the more certain you can be about what is or is not causing the dog’s symptoms.

Home-Prepared Option
Another option is to prepare your dog’s elimination diet yourself – a course of action that has its own benefits and pitfalls. While it provides you with the ultimate method of ensuring that your dog’s diet contains only those ingredients that prove to be safe for your dog, it may take some trial and error to figure out appropriate portion sizes and the best ratio of meat to carbohydrate for your dog. Also, you may be limited as to how long you can keep your dog on the diet, as it isn’t likely to be nutritionally balanced.

It can also be expensive. When dog-food manufacturers use something like kangaroo or rabbit in their diets, they have the benefit of buying those novel proteins in bulk, for much lower prices than you are likely to pay. That’s why it can be a great boon if you’ve never fed your dog a diet that contains a common animal protein, that is, when your dog’s “novel” protein is something that’s easy to find and affordable, like fish or beef.

Serving the New Food
The switch to the elimination diet should take place over the course of a few days. Change your dog’s food gradually, substituting increasing amounts of the new food for equal amounts of the old food until the dog is eating only the new food. If you see any signs of gastric distress (vomiting, diarrhea, constipation, which may indicate your dog is allergic to one of the ingredients you have chosen) or if your dog refuses to eat the new food, you’ll need to choose different ingredients.

The length of time that you feed the initial diet (of just one protein and one carb), and how long you should wait before introducing a new ingredient, will depend on how your dog’s allergies are expressed. Dogs whose primary allergy symptoms include diarrhea, vomiting, and gas will respond (for better or worse) relatively quickly after dietary changes are made.

However, if the dog’s primary symptom is itching, it can take a lot longer for the problem to subside after the “trigger” food is removed from his diet. It may also take longer for him to start itching again when a problematic ingredient is added back into the diet.

“For food-allergic dogs whose symptoms are gastrointestinal, you only have to do the ‘diet trial’ for two weeks,” Dr. Fatcheric says, adding that it could take as much as 8 to 12 weeks for skin problems to completely clear.

If there is absolutely no change in the dog’s symptoms – no reduction in itching or GI problems – you may want to change both the protein source and the carb source and start a new elimination trial.

If a second trial, with all-new ingredients, produces no reduction in the dog’s symptoms, it’s very likely that the dog’s diet is not what he’s allergic to; he most likely is allergic to something else in his environment.

In contrast, if your dog’s symptoms reduce immediately and disappear quickly, you will know that there was something in his most recent diet (before the elimination diet) to which he was allergic.

Challenging
Few owners are willing to take a further step to confirm the link between their dogs’ old diet and the dogs’ allergy symptoms – a “challenge” phase – but many veterinarians feel this step is necessary. To definitively establish the link between the dog’s former diet (or even the single ingredient suspected of being the allergy culprit in the old food), some vets suggest reintroducing the old diet (or the suspect ingredient); if the dog begins to break out in itching or GI distress, the allergen for that dog is decisively confirmed. Quickly return to the diet that your dog did well on, with no allergy symptoms.

Some owners stop there – and who can blame them? It’s a pain to employ such scrupulous supervision over your dog’s diet. If you feel confident that the trial and challenge have identified the ingredient that is problematic for your dog, you can start looking for (or formulating) a new, complete and balanced diet that is free of that ingredient.

However, it can be incredibly useful to continue for a few more weeks, to challenge your dog with a few more ingredients (one at a time), in hopes of finding more ingredients that are safe for him to consume. Feed him the trial diet until his allergy symptoms are gone again, and then add one ingredient that you would like to use in his diet in the future. If you are able to add it and he doesn’t react with signs of allergy within two to three weeks, you can put that ingredient on his “safe” list for now. Once you have challenged his system with a few proteins and carbs without an allergic response, you should have enough ingredients on his “safe” list to enable you to buy or build a complete and balanced diet containing those ingredients (and none of the ones that he’s proven to be allergic to).

If you’re lucky, you may be able to find a commercial diet that contains only the ingredients on your dog’s safe list and none of the ones that trigger an allergic reaction in your dog. But if you can’t find such a diet, or want to continue to prepare your dog’s diet at home, Dr. Fatcheric recommends that you “work with a veterinary nutritionist to make sure your diet is balanced and complete.” Another option is to consult with a company like JustFoodForDogs, which will formulate a diet based on your dog’s special needs. (See “Better Choices for Home-Prepared and Special Needs Recipes,” December 2013.)

Tips to Ensure Clear Results
Make sure your dog consumes only the “trial” food – even for treats. For training treats, use dried bits of the animal protein you are using in the trial. (See “How to Make High Quality Dehydrated Dog Treats” in the May 2012 issue of WDJ.)

Be sure to check any medications your dog may be on, such as a monthly heartworm preventative, to make sure they have no flavorings. If they do or you’re not sure, ask your veterinarian for an unflavored alternative. It is critical that you are vigilant about your dog’s diet during this time.

If you have several pets, you’ll need to oversee dinner time to ensure your dog doesn’t eat someone else’s meal. Or put all the dogs in the household on the same diet for the trial period. With an elimination diet, your dog can’t even lick the cat’s bowl clean or gobble down something he finds outside. You’ll need to watch everything he does. This is another time when it’s valuable for your dog to be happy and habituated in a crate for the periods when you can’t supervise him directly.

“I myself would have a hard time being completely compliant for two to three months. No treats (of foods that aren’t part of the diet). No nothing. Be careful in homes with toddlers who drop food on the floor. And watch for well-meaning neighbors or in-laws slipping a treat,” Dr. Fatcheric says.

The Proof
A food-elimination trial can be a valuable tool in determining the cause of your dog’s discomfort. But it does take commitment, vigilance, and a little extra cash. It’s well worth the effort, though, if you do it correctly.

If you stick with the restricted-diet regimen, you should see a reduction in itching by 50 percent or more at the end of the trial. If not, you haven’t eliminated the cause. That means you either need to try another combination, consisting of a new protein and new carbohydrate, or determine that dietary hypersensitivity is not the issue. That’s why it’s so important to involve your veterinarian right from the start.

If the results do prove a dietary cause, you will have been given the key to an itch-free, happy, comfortable dog. You can then either choose a commercial food that contains only those ingredients you used during the elimination trial or consult a veterinary nutritionist to construct a diet that will work for your dog. It’s important that the dog’s diet for the long-term is complete and balanced.

“Diet trials are hard. But the people with food-allergic dogs who successfully complete them potentially have a comfortable, itch-free pet without expensive and potentially harmful medications. It’s worth it, if you can tough it out,” Dr. Fatcheric says.

Cynthia Foley is an experienced dog agility competitor. Also a lifelong horsewoman, she served as editor of Horse Journal from its inception in 1994 to 2014.