I found out today that Blitzen has a severe skin infection. Poor thing is losing hair left and right. Well I've been told several times that Blitzen has a skin infection. He even had them as a puppy and they'd go away for awhile (or seem to go away) and then flair back up again. Lately I haven't been able to get his skin issue under control and I know it's an allergy of some kind. Well I remember talking with one of the doctors I work with, and he mentioned that allergies causes a weakness in the immune system and causes infections. Well since Blitzen has had episodes of infections since he was a puppy, it makes me want to think he has a food allergy! I don't really want to spend all the money to get the Z/D food. First I thought I would try Lamb and Rice. For those of you who have dogs with food allergies...how did Lamb and Rice work for you? I don't want him to suffer any longer. The Doctor I work with said that it would take two months to notice any real difference. Should I try lamb and rice because it's cheaper to see what happens, or should I just go straight to Z/D and do the whole food allergy testing experience. If he is on Z/D he's not allowed to have ANY treats or flavored ANYTHING while on it to rule out any chances of allergies.......What would you do?

I went the Z/D route and slowly reintroduced foods to see what he would have reaction. Charlie ended up having grain allergy, specifically wheat. Charlie loved the Z/D but its way too expensive to do long term. So now I watch giving him grains. He has been doing very well.

If it were me, I would go with the vet directed food ellimination diet so you can pin point exactly what the allergen is.--which is what I did for Scooby--it turned out to be environmental for us. I hope it's an easily identifiable food allergy for you. Environmental allergies are a royal pain.

I would follow your vet's advice. If you can determine that this is in fact a food allergy by doing a trial on the Z/D, then you can look at other options for long term use. There are several commercial available limited ingredient (single source of protein, single carbohydrate) foods, many with novel (i.e. something your dog has never eaten before like rabbit or venison) proteins which would make a food allergy less likely.

It is very important when doing a food allergy trial to stick to the diet very strictly (no other treats, foods, snacks, etc.) for it to work.

I'm going to move this to Diet & Nutrition. There are a lot of us who have done Elimination Diets and deal with dogs with various degrees and types of food allergies and/or intolerances who can help you :)

Edited to add: Lamb and rice is no longer considered a hypoallergenic diet. Lamb is such a mainstream ingredient now, and is included in so many foods either as the primary or one of many proteins, that many dogs have already been exposed to it. What food are you using now, and what others in the past? If any of them contain lamb, then a lamb & rice food will probably not make a difference or a reliable food trial.

I would do as the vet says and stick to the diet only.

Here is our allergy story if it helps.
When I adopted Ernie his coat was dull and he itched non stop.I started him on raw while I waited for the skin tests. He stopped itching. I am not saying start raw.
I continued to give dried treats etc and often dry food.I tried all sorts and found potato and salmon was o.k.

Late last year he became very sick and constantly vomitting. He wasn't itching, but did have dandruff. Vets treated him for Pancreatitis and we started Z.D. He improved, but not much and after 8 weeks was diagnosed with IBD. (Not that your dog has this.)
He has been on Royal Cannine with nothing else since. No vitamins. Nothing. This was hard as we were used to giving him other nibbles and treats.

I have never seen him look so good. The whites of his eyes are white, not murkey yellow or blood shot and for the first time in 3 years not vomitting.

I didn't realise how important it was not to give treats or even a tiny bit of food. I thought giving him the right diet was the thing to do, forgetting other food have allergy foods and the smallest bit could cause a reaction.

I agree, since it is such a problem with him, go with the vet recommendatins.
We feed Avoderm, its grain free. We have completely eliminated yeasty ears in Melody and her seasonal itchies. Bandit is being slowly changed over to Avoderm now.
Good luck and keep us posted.

I've also been able to identify the foods my dogs don't tolerate well (we're lucky not to have full blown allergies!) by doing an elimination diet. We did two months of nothing but the one food and the treats with the exact same ingredients. By getting them stable on a true elimination diet, you can add foods back one at a time to find out what they react to, and thus eliminate them.

We were able to discover that neither of our dogs tolerate lamb (fresh or in kibble gives them terrible body odor, soft smelly stools and gas), Drum starts compulsive licking on corn, wheat and rye, and Grip gets ear infections from wheat and rye (he used to react to barley as well but seems not to at this point). Also, neither does well with oatmeal as an ingredient in dog food, but have no reaction to homemade (human) oatmeal.

It is well worth doing a strict food trial under your vet's supervision to avoid the frustration of trial and error that comes with the dog food roller coaster.

I agree, since it is such a problem with him, go with the vet recommendatins.
We feed Avoderm, its grain free. We have completely eliminated yeasty ears in Melody and her seasonal itchies. Bandit is being slowly changed over to Avoderm now.
Good luck and keep us posted.

I'm always interested in trying grain-free formulas that we haven't fed yet, but all the Avoderm products I see on their web site seem to have rice or oatmeal in them. While the formulas look really good, I'm just not seeing any grain-free.

Good call, LuckyLuna. All of the Avoderm formulas contain grains (rice, oatmeal and in the beef variety, the first ingredient is whole wheat flour). None of their their products would be appropriate for an elimination diet.