The importance of dietary control in skin and hair disorders in dogs

Abstract

The frequency of hair and skin disorders in dogs has increased in recent years. Diet has a role to play in dealing with these disorders. Several companies produce commercial diets to help treat these disorders.These disorders include Atopic dermatitis, Zinc responsive dermatosis, food allergy dermatitis and dandruff. For this study two different foods were use.These were premium original chicken and brown rice and Super premium anallergenic.They were fed to four dogs of different breeds. One dog which had dandruff was fed with premium original chicken and brown rice. The other three, which included dogs with pruritus, dandruff and food allergy dermatitis, were fed with superpremium anallergenic dog food. The results of the trial were as follows: the dog with dandruff, which was fed with premium dog food, showed no modifications during the trial period. In fact its condition remained the same. The dog with pruritus worsened during the trial period when it was fed with super-premium anallergenic dog food. The dog with dandruff fed with super-premium analelergrnic did not show any modifications and its condition remained the same. The dog with food allergy dermatitis shows no modifactions or lesions when fed with super-premium anallergenic dog food. Three of the four dogs were reluctant to eat the foods initially. The conclusion of the trial was the fact that the diets used were unable to illustrate improvement in two of the four dogs. The condition of one dog worsened during the period while the condition of the other one was managed when eating the food.