[6d6b73]

Did she changed her diet in that time? Personally I noticed that the diet is what really drives the allergies. What's more, my son developed dog allergies, and we were about to give up our dog, but before that we decided to change the diet of .. the dog. Believe it or not, after 6 months my son is no longer allergic to our four-legged family member, but also to most other dogs.

[Spacemolte]

That sounds really interesting, that's one of those things i would never even have thought about. Can you elaborate on what dog food you used before and after?

[6d6b73]

I also would not suspect that this could help, but we noticed that he did not react to my sister' dog, that has a very strict diet (below) but was reacting to other dogs. So it made sense to try switching the diet before giving up on the dog.

Before my dog was getting a mix of dry and "wet" food, from various companies, and occasional scraps from the table. Currently we only feed him dry food from Orijen, and plan on introducing some other "wet" food soon. He's also getting a good quality bones with a lot of bone marrow, and about once a week some boneless sardines in olive oil.

[nucleardog]

A bit of anecdata - but all of our animals (few dogs, couple cats) have shed significantly less and had a much healthier looking coat once we switched them to better foods.

The reduction in shedding going from kibble that's primarily rice and corn to something that's actually nutritionally appropriate ingredients for a dog/cat was astounding (but should have been unsurprising).

My understanding is that pet allergies are generally allergies to the shed hair and skin, so a healthier diet may have reduced that significantly.

(For anyone curious, a basic analysis of a "cheap" food: http://www.dogfoodadvisor.com/dog-food-reviews/alpo-dog-food... And a basic analysis of a "good" food: http://www.dogfoodadvisor.com/dog-food-reviews/acana-singles...)

[sageikosa]

She first noticed that she was feeling sick and started eliminating foods until we guessed it was the peanut butter sandwiches she was eating for lunch on tour. She did see an allergists who confirmed (with pretty obvious evidence) the reaction to peanuts.

She stopped eating peanuts for about a year, then gradually found she was capable of eating them again (her favorite candy was Reese's peanut butter cups, so a heartbreaking year that was). My belief is she is more cautious on the volume and frequency of her consumption now, but is otherwise unrestricted.

My guess was always that she must've had some low-grade infection (viral or otherwise) and the response was also broadly interacting with the proteins in peanuts.

The immune system isn't a designed system, it's a series of responses (and the ability to generate new response) that we broadly call a system because the net effect is as if there were some dynamic thing protecting us. Sometimes it just does its thing without regard to the segmentation faults it creates.