Ask Your Vet -- Your Pet May Be Itchin' To Try One Of These Four New Diets

First it was Nature Recipe's lamb and rice, last year Purina introduced turkey and barley, now Innovative Veterinary Diets (IVD), a division of Nature's Recipe, is offering your pet several more alternatives.

At the recent American Animal Hospital Association annual meeting here, the company announced the release of four limited antigen diets for dogs, available only through veterinarians - lamb and potato, venison and potato, duck and potato and rabbit and potato. The rabbit-potato, lamb-potato and venison-potato combos are also available for felines. Skip McCabe, IVD director of marketing, said, "These products offer the veterinarian some much-needed choices in dealing with pets' allergic reactions to some foods."

The reactions, called dietary hypersensitivity, can cause gastrointestinal disorders, as well as making your pet's skin itch.

Determining the cause of skin allergies is one of the most baffling diagnoses facing veterinarians today. Sometimes it's something environmental. On other occasions, it might be diet related.

An IVD technical bulletin says, "The term food allergy has been greatly misued in veterinary literature. While there seems little reason to doubt that food allergies occur in dogs and cats, adequate documentation of an allergic response to food has rarely been provided in spite of a wealth of literature on the subject."

"Put in simplest terms, the IVD products offer new protein and carbohydrate sources for veterinarians to deal with the managing pets' dietary allergic reactions," said McCabe.

All food proteins, he said, are potentially antigenic because they are foreign to the body's immune system and have the potential to trigger an allergic response. The new diets attempt to minimize these sources.

The culprits seem to be the ingredients in the protein-laden antigens in commercial diets - artificial colors, flavors, preservatives, drugs and molds. Troublesome protein food sources (antigens) include beef, chicken, pork, milk, whey, soy, eggs, fish, corn, wheat and other cereal grains.

If the practitioner suspects your pet's allergies are diet related, he/she might direct you change the diet with one of these four products for three to 10 weeks before alternative treatments or permanent dietary recommendations are employed. However, severe gastrointestinal symptoms or other serious symptoms of dietary hypersensitivity may alter this approach.

If remission is achieved, your veterinarian will instruct you to switch to a second food source which you will feed to the animal for the remainder of its life.

Research has shown that to control the problem, it's critical to introduce single-protein sources to the pet. The first sometimes creates an allergic reaction just as the original food. By switching to a second, after several weeks on the first, you don't face the risk of another protein blowup.

Compared to your pet's present diet, these alternatives will be more expensive. All are available only in canned form now, although dry foods are expected to be available later this year.

McCabe estimated it will cost most owners between $3.20 to $4.20 daily to keep their dogs on these diets. The rabbit and potato, duck and potato, lamb and potato products will cost an average $1.37 a can while the venison and potato will be $1.51.

Before being released, palatability tests were conducted with all four products on several breeds at a Southeast veterinary college.

Need more information? A free owner brochure on these diets is available by calling INF at 1-800-843-4008. Free booklet

Do you own one of those pets that goes bonkers from the sounds of fireworks or thunder?

If so, you might want to obtain a free pamphlet, "Fear of Thunder and Other Loud Noises," being offered by Gaines Cycle Pet Care Center.

It discusses the myth that dogs will eventually outgrow a fear of thunder and other loud noises without treatment, then lists an assortment of treatments for noise phobias in dogs.

To order, just write to: Quaker Professional Services, "Fear of Thunder . . . Dept M216, 585 Hawthorne Court, Galesburg, IL 61401.

-- Mail information regarding dog/cat events to Classified Division, attn. Marilyn Fairbanks, Dog/Cat Events, The Seattle Times, P.O. Box 70, Seattle, WA. 98111. All releases must be in writing and received by Monday prior to Sunday publication. Be sure to include a public phone-contact number. Also don't forget to phone in for my pet tip of the week on The Seattle Times Infoline, 464-2000, then press PETS (7387).