English Setter food allergy help after failed diets

Four limited ingredient diets with inconsistent results is genuinely frustrating — and honestly it's a pattern I see when dogs have a sensitivity that standard LID foods aren't fully addressing. True food allergies in dogs are less common than intolerances, but either way, if rotating through single-protein foods isn't giving you clear answers, the issue is often that those foods still share hidden allergens — things like shared manufacturing lines, trace legumes, or proteins that cross-react. The gold standard at that point is usually a hydrolysed protein diet, where the proteins are broken down small enough that the immune system can't react to them. Before I point you in the right direction — what symptoms is your Setter showing, and do you know which proteins were in the four foods you tried?

That combination — paw chewing, ear irritation and loose stools — is a classic food intolerance picture in dogs, and English Setters are actually one of the breeds with a higher predisposition to it. The problem with swapping between those four proteins is that you haven't had a clean washout period between each one, so you've never really seen a baseline. You've also cycled through four of the most commonly used proteins in commercial dog food, which means if he is reacting to one of them, you may have just been rotating through triggers. Here's what I'd suggest: move to a hydrolysed protein diet for a strict 8-week trial — no treats, no chews, nothing else — and use that as your reset. It'll tell you definitively whether food is the root cause. I'd also book a vet visit, because ear and paw symptoms can sometimes have a concurrent environmental component that runs alongside the food issue.

For a proper hydrolysed elimination trial, I'd recommend Purina Pro Plan Veterinary Diets HA Hydrolysed dry dog food. It's one of the few genuinely hydrolysed options readily available in the UK — you can get it on Amazon — and it's what many vets use for diagnostic elimination trials. The protein source is hydrolysed soy, broken down to a molecular weight low enough that sensitised dogs typically don't react to it, and the single carbohydrate source keeps the ingredient list clean. It's not glamorous, and it's not cheap, but it's the right tool for what you're trying to do. The 3kg bag is a good starting point to see how he tolerates it before committing to a larger quantity. The key is strict exclusivity for the full 8 weeks — if he improves significantly, you've confirmed food is the driver, and you can then do controlled reintroductions to identify the specific culprit.

I understand the temptation, but 8 weeks is the minimum for a reason — skin symptoms driven by food can take 4 to 6 weeks just to start resolving, because the immune response and skin barrier take time to calm down. If you pull him off at 4 weeks because he seems better, you haven't established a true baseline, and when you reintroduce foods you won't know if a reaction is genuinely to that food or just residual inflammation. Eight weeks gives you clean data. The loose stools may improve much faster — sometimes within 2 to 3 weeks — and that's an encouraging early sign, but stick with it for the full duration before drawing conclusions on the skin.

Good plan — the vet visit is worth doing sooner rather than later, particularly to rule out a yeast infection in the ears, which often develops secondary to food-driven inflammation and needs its own treatment. Keep a simple diary during the trial: note the paw licking frequency, stool consistency and any ear scratching. It makes the conversation with your vet much more useful and helps you see progress even when it feels slow. Good luck with him — English Setters are worth the effort.