[tollieb]

My dog, an English Bulldog, suffers from excessive hair loss. I've got her on the Hills Scientific Plan Sensitive Skin dogfood which does not seem to help. What alternative dogfood can I look at?

[charlotte234s]

Maybe you could look into a natural diet? ( real meat fruit vegetables, grain/rice, etc) It's more work 'cause you have to measure and cook and stuff but it may help with his skin and hair loss. Have you asked a vet what you should feed him?

Hope the pup gets better soon!

[labman]

I would work with your vet. The problem may not even be diet related. Has the vet done a complete work up with blood tests and all that? Push the vet to find the real cause. How much is excessive? All short haired dogs shed.

It is very dangerous to fool around with preparing you own natural diet. There is no way of being sure you are giving the dog the complete and balanced diet it needs. There isn't a shred of proof backing such diets.

[tollieb]

The response is based on experience

[charlotte234s]

That's true, I'm just throwing out ideas.

Either way, definitely talk to a vet about what you should do.

[tollieb]

The more insights, the better

[labman]

Well any nonsense about natural food needs to be thrown out.

[RubyPitbull]

Tollie, bulldogs and related breeds, have a tendency toward allergies. Hair loss is one of the frustrating side effects. I agree fully with labman. You should be working with your vet on this. He/she may be able to find what the allergy is through a bloodworkup. But, please don't be too disappointed if the vet isn't able to determine the exact cause. I also agree that switching diets and turning your dog into a virtual guinea pig by trying different things is a very bad idea. Bull dogs have enough of a problem with gastric distress. This will only add to it.

Question for you: Is the hair loss a year round problem, or does it occur more in the cold weather seasons? If it is during the cold weather, your dog may be suffering from alopecia. This occurs due to less sunlight during the winter months. Here is a link to a discussion about it that we had the other day. https://www.askmehelpdesk.com/dogs/d...in-150895.html
If this doesn't help with the problem, it is best to stick with the food you have been feeding and work directly with your vet to see if he/she can come up with a solution. If you get a chance, let us know what the outcome is. I am very interested in what the vet has to say.

[tollieb]

Hi RubyPitbull
Thanks for the interest!
My vet actually supplies me with the Science Plan food. I have in the meantime contacted the breeder from whom I got my dog. It seems that the problem may be hereditary in the particular line. His dogs have a similar issue which according to him is OK. My expectation was to have a dog having no hair loss whatsoever... a bit of a misconception I realise now. Thanks everyone (labman and charlot234s) for the input, it is much appreciated.

In defence of charlot, she may have a valid point regarding so called 'natural food', albeit a contentious subject. A friend pointed me to book entitled, 'Longer Life for the Dog You Love', volumes 1 & 2, authored by Michele Welton, published in the USA, 2004/5. Lastmentioned has been a 'dog person' for some 30 years now, and have authored a number of pet care books. She is also a dog instructor / trainer and canine behavioural consultant. In her book mentioned here she propagates natural food, or, as she calls it, REAL FOOD, viz. fresh chicken, turkey, beef, and fresh raw vegetables, fruit, brown rice, oatmeal, yogurt, eggs, and cottage cheese. Having just read the sections pertaining to natural raw food, and references by a number of vets affirming the benefit thereof, I would like to research the matter further.

[charlotte234s]

It's true that you can harm your dog by taking him off dog food and trying to feed natural foods if you don't know what you're doing or don't do it properly or whatnot, but yeah, just a suggestion you may want to look into, but always discuss things major like changing the diet of your pet with your veterinarian first.

[labman]

Yeah, there is good money to be made writing books filled with junk science about natural diets. If you don't think people are making money on ''natural'' diets, how do you think they pay for all the banner ads here? Those peddling that junk are no better than the people running puppy mills. One of the basic premises is that dogs don't do well on commercial dog chows. That doesn't take in to account all the dogs thriving on such diets.

Suppose you knew a breeder that bred hundreds of dogs a year, mostly Labs, Shepherds, and Goldens. They provided all the medical care for most of them the first year. At the end of it, they did a complete physical including hip X-rays on all of them. They then spent $35,000 training them before giving them away. They have a large data base of breeding records. Dogs with any physical or temperamental problems are unfit for the program and are a waste. Their well equipped clinic and vet staff are available for serious problems as long as the dog is working. When the dog is no longer able to work, it is replaced at again the $35,000 plus a large emotional upheaval for the person depending on the dog. They have experimented with different diets and exchanged data with other such breeders. Don't you think that what ever they are feeding is healthy and safe? What kinds of controlled studies do are there backing other choices of diet? How objective are the sources of your information? Is your dog's health, their top priority?

I have been raising puppies since 1991 for a large dog guide school that does exactly that. What do they feed? They instruct us to feed Pro Plan chicken and rice puppy chow until 4 months and then switch to adult Pro Plan chicken and rice. I know enough of the people with the trained dogs to know they continue the Pro Plan. The group I meet with monthly for training includes people that have raised puppies for 6 different service dog schools. Some of them are feeding other premium commercial chows including Iams and Eukanuba. Any dog owner wanting a healthy, long lived dog can make this regimen work, leaving more time to spend on the dog. It is also relatively economical.

The BARF and other raw and natural diets are built on many fallacies, starting with the idea the chicken from the supermarket is similar to natural prey. Not so. At the processing plant, all the nutritious insides including the organ meats are removed. They are sold to the commercial dog food producers. Have you ever seen a predator eat a kill? What do they eat first? Right, all those nasty byproducts that go into the commercial dog food.

The AVMA condemns the BARF diet. And they are not concerned about contaminating you and your families food handling all that raw meat in your house. The FDA and the CDC are. If you do go with it, practice good sanitation.

If you can't produce a controlled study showing dogs doing better on an alternative diet than commercial chows, why should anybody listen to you? Please don't waste my time with a link to a site hyperventilating about ingredients.

Any breeder knowingly breeding dogs with known genetic defects is a low piece of scum with a cash register for a heart. Make sure everybody you know hears about your dog's problems.

There are any number of sites put up on the net by kooks and those selling alternative diets pushing such diets. One of the few sites giving the other side too is Articles 2 As far as I know, they are selling dogs, not dog chow.

Most of the people I have seen advocating alternative diets, don't seem to know much else about dogs either.

[charlotte234s]

I am not advocating alternative diets, or purchasing anything commercialized and marketed as an alternative diet I am just giving suggestions, and in no way telling someone what to do without consulting a veterinarian first, and it's true I don't know everything about dogs, but for hundreds of years people fed their dogs natural foods, kibble wasn't around, so it CAN be okay if a person KNOWS what they are doing, so PLEASE do not act like I am stupid or be rude to me, I was merely making a suggestion and I don't need to be attacked for talking about something with someone, and I was not rude to you or this person in any way, nor was I pushing anything on them.

[RubyPitbull]

Hi RubyPitbull
Thanks for the interest!
My vet actually supplies me with the Science Plan food. I have in the meantime contacted the breeder from whom I got my dog. It seems that the problem may be hereditary in the particular line. His dogs have a similar issue which according to him is OK. My expectation was to have a dog having no hair loss whatsoever... a bit of a misconception I realise now. Thanks everyone (labman and charlot234s) for the input, it is much appreciated.

In defence of charlot, she may have a valid point regarding so called 'natural food', albeit a contentious subject. A friend pointed me to book entitled, 'Longer Life for the Dog You Love', volumes 1 & 2, authored by Michele Welton, published in the USA, 2004/5. Lastmentioned has been a 'dog person' for some 30 years now, and have authored a number of pet care books. She is also a dog instructor / trainer and canine behavioural consultant. In her book mentioned here she propagates natural food, or, as she calls it, REAL FOOD, viz. fresh chicken, turkey, beef, and fresh raw vegetables, fruit, brown rice, oatmeal, yogurt, eggs, and cottage cheese. Having just read the sections pertaining to natural raw food, and references by a number of vets affirming the benefit thereof, I would like to research the matter further.

I am not putting down Charlotte in any way here. She is a very sweet person who always tries to help people here in all areas on this site.

You have many people that feel as Michele Welton does. I don't agree with the natural food method for the reasons Labman has stated. There aren't any long term statistics that can absolutely back up this claim. I am not even going to get into the problem that it causes for a dog's teeth! LOL.

Both Labman and I have worked extensively for years with dogs in one way or another. He trains service dogs. I foster and retrain problem rescues. We both work with vets. I work with a number of them, one of them is a behaviorist/trainer as well as a practicing vet. None of these vets advise anyone to switch to the RAW diet. If your vet felt this was the right thing for your dog, he would have advised it. Science Diet can only be bought from veterinarians and it is a high quality chow that has been created by veterinarians. The reason I suggested you speak to your vet is because that is the person who knows your dog. I did know that he sold you the Science Diet. What you need to do is have a conversation with him about it and not rely on the people without a degree in veterinary medicine. I don't. With all the health related issues my dog has, I won't trust her health to someone who does the same work as I do and just has happened to write a book about her personal experiences and opinions. There are so many of them out there. You will find the same number of more qualified people on the other side of the debate who state that a high quality chow is the way to go.

I also agree with labman's opinion about the breeder of your dog. He is not what the AKC would consider a responsible breeder. No one who truly loves a breed of dog will purposefully continue to breed a genetic defect. He is breeding those dogs to make money off them and isn't concerned with creating and maintaining a quality line of dog. Unfortunately this happens all too often and it is why I would prefer to see people adopt. If those breeders run out of buyers due to consumer awareness, they will be forced to discontinue breeding low quality dogs. When I mentioned the hair loss & the gastric distress that bull dogs get, it is due to irresponsible breeding practices. I have seen this time and again. Both those problems are big issues for bull dogs in the U.S. I don't know if your dog experiences the gassiness and bloat that a lot of bull dogs do, but I would rather err on the side of caution and recommend that you don't play around with his food. Frankly, I don't think any food is going to help this issue. He is genetically predisposed to this condition. You could try working with your vet on allergy issues, have him do a blood panel screening to see if there is something that may be triggering it further, so that you can try to work on minimizing the problem the best you can.

[charlotte234s]

And yeah, a breeder who breeds a defect is being irresponsible and doesn't care about the dogs, and that's really sad.