Allergies & Yeast & Leaky Gut, oh my!

by Casey
(Texas)

Hi there!

Thank you so much for the wealth of information provided on your site! When your furbaby isn't well, sometimes you just don't know where to turn!

We have a 10-year old Border Collie named Lola. Over the last several years, she's become increasingly itchy...to the point of making herself bleed. She incessantly licks and chews (paws, arms, etc.) Visits to the vet haven't been much help. We were told she has an allergy to fleas, and probably beef or chicken. Keep flea treatment on her and try something other than beef or chicken has been the advice we receive. We switched her to salmon for quite some time, but we saw no change.

So, I started doing hours upon hours of research to try and find a solution. The more I've read, the more I see it's most likely caused from a toxicity overload. She has been on antibiotics a few times since we've had her, and the vet insists on yearly vaccinations of several different things as well as heartworm medication and the flea treatments.

About a month ago, we started feeding her raw with homemade bone broth, started her on pre/probiotics, bovine colostrum, and a liver tonic. The first several days, it seemed like a miracle! No itching or chewing... but then, she's gotten worse all of a sudden. She has a yeasty ear infection in one ear, around her mouth is very red and crusty, her skin is super red, one of her eyes is super gunky, and she's back to itching and chewing.

I know that a healing crisis is a very real possibility as the yeast dies off, but, I guess I'm just trying to work out whether it's that, or if she's allergic to what we are feeding her. She had been off beef and chicken for so long without a change, that we started her raw diet off with chicken. Where we live, novel proteins are almost impossible to find. We're in Texas, so everyone just shoots their own deer or rabbit, so you can't find it in stores (My husband and I are actually vegans, so we could never shoot anything, lol). We've tried her on beef and pork, but she really just loves the chicken the most.

We add sardines also so that she gets the Omega 3's she needs, and she just gobbles it right up. She also does better with the chicken bones than any others we've tried her on. She eats them from her bowl... the others she takes outside and just lays by them or buries them.

So, yeast die off or allergy to everything? Is there any way to tell? We know this is going to be a long process and that her ill health didn't happen overnight, so her healing won't either. I just don't want to be hindering her healing process in any way.

Is there anything we're not doing that we should be?

Thanks so much for being a light in such a dark time for people!

Cheers,
Casey