Hypoallergenic homemade dog food is healthy for your puppy and free from allergens and ingredients that might cause irritation or reactions in your dog’s tummy. Some common dog allergies are with ingredients such as wheat, dairy, soya, excessive carbohydrates, artificial colours and preservatives, certain fats and even different proteins.
Our recipe is specially formulated to avoid the most common dog allergies and to ensure easy digestion for your pet’s stomach. We use a single protein (chicken: chicken meat 70% and chicken liver 3%) and have mixed it with the perfect blend of organic brown rice flour (for all the gluten free dogs) and natural nutrients (including seaweed and cranberries) and vitamins.
Whilst natural raw dog foods contain high nutritional content, raw food is harder for your dog’s digestive system. Because we gently cook our food at a low temperature all the natural goodness is preserved and our food is easily digested by even the most sensitive stomachs.
The first thing to note here is that pet allergies can often be caused by environmental issues or fleas, so it is always worth checking for these first.
When a dog shows signs of an allergy (like an itchy patch of skin), food is often thought of as the root cause, but more often than not, it is not the real problem. With this in mind, it is always worth checking with your vet.
We often lump food intolerances and allergies in the same boat. An intolerance is your dog's digestive system unable to digest certain foods, whilst allergies are actual an immune reaction to a substance.
Saying that, the net effect for the dog owner is very much the same, to try and avoid feeding your dog the offending food!
If a dogs eat something they're allergic to, they can suffer from any of the following symptoms:
Often allergies and intolerances can be passed down genetically from parents to pups and certain breeds have higher risks than others. The most common allergens are proteins, but with the mass commercialization of kibbles and tinned foods these days, it is now incredibly common to find dogs allergic to cheap fillers in the foods as well.
When it comes to allergies, these are the most common problem foods for dogs:
The most thorough way of working through what your dog is allergic to is by commencing an elimination diet.
Dr. Susan Wynn, a veterinary nutritionist, in an interview with Fetch by WebMD, describes the process: “What we do is take the dog off all the foods it’s eating and we put him on a food that he’s never had before. I’ve sent people out for alligator and yak. Once the dog has improved, we start reintroducing the old foods that we suspect caused the problems in the first place. If he has a reaction, which usually takes a few days to a few weeks, then we know he has a food allergy.”
There are 3 main options available here:
You may want to do some combination of the above, just be sure to give any changes enough time to work through your dog's system. So for example if you introduce a new food, give it at least two weeks before introducing others to be sure that it is safe.
Drop us a message with any information about your dog's situation. We'll ask our in house experts if we can help.
To help speed up the process, please let us know what you are currently feeding your dog, as well as breed, age and activity level.
Vets will often recommend 'exclusion diets', so please do let us know if you have been through this process so we have a clear idea on how sure you are about the various allergies.
No ingredients you can’t pronounce. Everything a dog needs for a balanced nutritionally complete diet
We use high quality natural ingredients including human grade British farmed chicken. We gently cook the food on our farm at a low temperature and deliver it frozen fresh to your door. This means that all the goodness from the food makes it fresh to your dog's bowl.
Cooking the food is important to ensure that all dangerous bacteria are killed off and importantly cooked food is easier to digest. Unfortunately mass produced kibbles and tinned foods are cooked at very high temperatures and this kills off any good nutrition in the proteins and amino acids in the food.
We use DPD next day delivery service to ensure that the food arrives at your door frozen fresh.
Store the food in the freezer and defrost in the fridge. Each chub has a 5 day 'fridge life' once defrosted.
Absolutely! There are three primary reasons why Pets Love Fresh is better than raw food. Firstly, the ingredients going in to our food are higher quality and better balanced than raw foods. Secondly, gently cooked food is easier to digest for dogs ensuring that they are getting the most nutrition possible from the food. Thirdly, by cooking our food we are killing any dangerous bacteria and pathogens such as listeria or e-coli.
This really depends on your dog's medical condition. We know from our research that our food will help with allergies and intolerances as the high quality single protein source we use is easy to digest and we have used natural ingredients known to aid digestion. If unsure, request your vet to look at our 'FULL NUTRITIONAL INFO' section to see if any of the ingredients may cause a problem for your dog.