Home cooked food.

After Tonks' cancer results she has to come off her Atopica, the med that just controls her itching. Her steroids are being upped in the hope of keeping her itching at bay.

I'm going to do all I can to control dust mites in the house and, as she is allergic to storage mites as well, I'm going to start feeding her home cooked food instead of kibble.

She is allergic to chicken and cheese, and possibly other stuff we don't now about so fish and rice, with a food suppliment seems like the best option for her. Trouble is I don't know what ratio fish to rice I should be giving her, or how much food.

She'll be 6 in January is very active and has at least an hours walk a day which she spends most of the time running about on. She's about 25kg.

Can anyone advise please.

Hi Catrin,
My friend lost her girl a couple of years ago to cancer and she had an excellent book about dog diet and cancer, there is a lot you can do to support her system
I am seeing her tomorrow I will get the details for you

Lovely thank you.

Talking to the vet today, we are in a real catch 22 phase as we need her immune system working well to beat any cancer cells...but want her immune system suppressed to reduce her body's reaction to allergens.

Why is she itching?

Because of the atopy, and dust and storage mite allergy. She's always mildly itchy.

one of the things that might help her itching a bit is wiping her down with a clean damp cloth daily, bit like polishing the dog as she has such a short coat this might help.

Ima is allergic to similar things and one of the things my vet told me was that they also react to the exoskeletons of the mites (so live as well as dead mites) so for Ima this means frequent bathing as she has such a long coat but for Tonks the damp cloth might help a bit, every little helps and all that

Will find out the books for you later today

Duncan had many many allergies, we home cooked for him so we could control what he had. Did help enormously and we adjusted his food as he became allergic to more things.

I enjoyed cooking for him so much I still do it for the dogs we now have Mollie is gluten intolerant and Betty cannot seem to eat turkey without getting the runs so we have a regime that seems them both gluten and turkey free which is much easier than poor old Duncan, we had to exclude so many problem foods from his diet.

Hi, thanks for all the suggestions. I will try the wiping down and have bought her a faux leather bed.

Since posting this I've found that a friend if a friend bulk orders naturediet and splits the cost with anyone who wants to order to. So, as she has done well on salmon for a year, I am going to try her on the salmon nature diet and see how we go. If that doesn't work out we will return to the home cooked option. I'm thinking that if I can save time with not cooking her food I'll have more time to dedicate with trying to keep dust mites to a minimum. With 3 and 4 year old daughters, two dogs, the dog walking business and paul away most of the time now I think I need to reevaluate wether cooking her food is realistic for me.

How often do you cook ? I used to just put aside a hour once a month to do the cooking and made enough to freeze for the entire 4-5 weeks. Now I cook weekly but it only takes 20 minutes or so to do it and I can do it while I wait for something for us to be cooked too so doesn't seem to take much time at all.

Catrin, just on a side note as I don't know what Tonks is allergic to. I've done some research into natural parasite repellents and found Billy No Mates, only heard good things about it. After a few weeks of feeding it to the dog, it starts repelling ticks, fleas and mites. So was wondering if that could help Tonks with the dust mites, as they just wouldn't go on her.
It's chemical free and is made up from mint, fenugreek, neem, lemon balm and seaweed.
Worth a try maybe?