Much like humans, dogs can be born with or develop food allergies during their life. When this happens it can be quite a problem to both dog and owner as these allergies usually express themselves with unpleasant symptoms, such as excessive scratching or a nasty rash on the dog’s skin. Needless to say, the joy of giving your dog a treat is rather diminished when the dog responds to it a few hours later (or even mere moments in some cases) with some unpleasant side effects. So how does one deal with such a situation?
The Trick to Rewarding an Allergic Dog
When it becomes clear that your dog is allergic to a certain type of food it will become your task as the dog’s owner to find a way to tip-toe around this problem, preferably without denying the dog one of its greater joys in life: a nice treat for being a good dog. Doing this will require a bit of preparation as many store-bought treats may now be unsuitable for your dog, depending on its allergy.
Thinking Outside the Box
Let’s say you have a dog that’s unfortunate enough to be allergic to beef products, what can you give it to tip-toe around this issue? Well, you could give your dog a piece of watermelon just to name an example. We can be fairly certain that watermelon will not contain any beef and as silly and obvious as this may seem, the certainty that your dog won’t react badly to the treat you give is important. There are a great many products which even though not intended for dogs are perfectly suitable as an occasional treat. Use common sense and double check that common sense with a quick search on the internet. Don’t feed your dog chocolate for example. Chocolate is bad for dogs as it causes theobromine poisoning and even a small amount can be harmful to your dog.
Thinking Inside the Box
Of course you could also just take a bit of time to research dog treats that are suitable for your dog. This is also a perfectly valid option and is certainly more convenient than keeping a whole watermelon around for when you want to give your dog a treat. For example, if your dog is allergic to beef, why not give it a chicken jerky, such as the ones offered by Betsy Farms? Just make sure that whatever treat you buy from the store has clearly labeled ingredients and do not contain whatever your dog is allergic to, no matter how tiny an amount. This can be quite the task, as ingredient lists can be huge and confusing. But once you’ve found a few treats that you are sure of, you can just keep buying those.
Even if your dog is the unlucky one that happens to be allergic to something, with a tiny bit of effort this does not have to prevent the mutual satisfaction that a dog and their owner can get from sharing this moment together.