Food allergies in Setters and poo eating. Advice please?

[Julia Grace]

Hello all, Harley has always had an on/off habit of eating poo. It phased out when he reached a year/18 months old but in the last six - twelve months it has come back with a vengeance.

He is fed on Harringtons kibble mix and has been for the last couple of years. My issue with the poo eating is not only is it absolutely disgusting but it seems to be more than just a dirty habit.
My apologies for going in to such detail but he eats it as it is coming out of him, it doesn't even hit the ground. He's also got to the point where on walks, I have to follow him everywhere as he will sometimes eat other dogs poo which frightens me because if he is eating random bits, it could be from any animal and have all sorts of nasties in it.

Having spoken to a friend who had a Setter, she was telling me that Setters can be prone to the canine version of coeliacs disease and have severe allergies to wheat, soy etc. Could this be what is causing him to eat his own droppings? I honestly don't know where to begin with this, I've phoned my vets and they've advised it's just a bad habit but I am sure it isn't, I've known dogs to do it but not to the degree he does.
Does anyone have any advice or pointers as to why he could be doing this and more importantly, how to treat it?
I've never had a dog who has done this, even in puppyhood so Harley is my first experience of it.

Any advice would be welcome, thanks :-).

[Fran Griffin]

ok, so you are not going to watch a 'snake oil video' and reach your conclusions. I think I rest my case, and say no more. I will leave that for others to decide.  But lets just get one thing clear. I spent thousands.... yes thousands on vets with Tallulah over the year. Not one vet, but several vets, INCLUDING a referral center, who were only able to give me a concrete diagnosis and the bad news that she only had a maximum of 9 months before the end would come, and it was staring us right in the face. It wasn't any snake oil vet who provided a potion, it was a conventional vet who just made a passing comment that he thought she might benefit from enzymes, (not snake oil) but enzymes, and then the 'snake oil' vet as you describe her (without even watching and checking out who she is) put out a video which had Tallulah's symptoms to the letter going right back to when she was a puppy.  Free advice from two qualified vets.  Also my own condition, is not well understood by G.P's. I almost died, before by fate I got the correct diagnosis and ended up with a specialist, who merely patched me up and put me on the road again, but by keeping abreast of the very LATEST scientific information, I have managed to reverse my own condition to a good extent, to the point that I am no longer staring death right in the face;.  In  fact, when my own specialist, a professor at Manchester Royal Infirmary, asks me to send him the information I am finding because he finds it so interesting and worthwhile, I think again..... I rest my case.

When you are in a position when conventional medicine fails, either you die (and I know others who have made that choice, because I had put these alternatives to them and they rejected them, because they trusted their doctors), or you look to the cutting edge of science and see where things are going, because the knowledge there is expanding at an incredible rate, on a daily basis in some cases, that you have to give it a go if you want to survive.  I am also fortunate that I have a niece who is a researcher working as a microbiologist at the cutting edge that I can run things past too.  

I hardly go with 'snake oil'. I go with knowledge which is so cutting edge, it has not had time to hit the conventional medics - YET. One 'snake oil' I tried for myself was vitamin D3 (just one thing). The knowledge of the role of vitamin D still hasn't properly reached main stream medicine yet,. as they are still stuck in the "rickets" paradigm. However, it is trickling through, and even hitting the main stream media. My own G.P practice are now testing ALL their cancer and auto-immune patients for vitamin D deficiency based upon the information I gave them 18 months ago. Guess what, they have discovered ALL their patients of this description are deficient.

Its hardly a conspiracy, it is a complete lack of knowledge, and too much reliance upon the powerful marketing of the food industry and the pharmaceuticals whose business goal is to sell their products and make a profit for their shareholders.

I have nothing more to say on this subject.  But if it is 'snake oil' information, so be it. If it works it works, but at least I question everything and want to know the whys and wherefores, and am not afraid to look in places which might prove me wrong, or even educate me.

[Teresa Jones]

Hi Julia, obviously you must do what you think is right for your dog.  But have you asked yourself why you don't have faith in your vet's prognosis and that you are asking a forum to help you?  I've almost given up trying to convince people that alternative treatments work.  What have you got to lose i was introduced to homeopathy in the 1970s and i was very sceptical at first but when a friend who practiced homeopathy treated my aunt for ulcers and general malaise and depression she improved within 2 weeks under her care.  Also i don't know if you have any children but if somebody suggested to you that there was a fantastic biscuit product on the market full of all the added vitamins etc that your child could possibly need would you feed this product to your child instead of meat and fresh vegetables.  I think you are right to question your vet's advice the only person who is going to solve this problem is yourself please do as much research on this condition as you possibly can and don't be afraid to change the diet if necessary.  I was very nervous about changing over to raw food why not try it if you're not happy with it you can always go back to dry.

[rob winemaker]

For what it's worth, I've tried the pineapple thing and I saw no change in behavior. I also tried pumpkin after last yrs. bumper crop in the garden and that didn't work either but all the pies were great. One of my boys is a poo eater but as he is getting older ( 2 now ), this behavior is diminishing.