This is a specific conversation about Dog food allergies — identifying and fixing them — ask about yours and get one honest answer for your exact situation.
inparticular.ai
Communal feeding on a working farm is one of the trickier situations for sorting out food allergies — you can't easily control every mouthful when your Corgi is eating alongside other dogs. Worth knowing upfront: true food allergies in dogs are less common than intolerances, and the gold standard fix is an elimination diet using a novel or hydrolysed protein. The challenge here is making that work practically. Can you tell me — what symptoms is your Corgi showing, how long has it been going on, and have you spoken to a vet about it yet?
She's 4 years old, been scratching a lot around her ears and paws for about 3 months, and has loose stools pretty regularly. No vet visit yet. She eats with 4 other working dogs twice a day — whatever goes in the communal bowl, basically. I can't really pull her out of that routine easily.
inparticular.ai
Those symptoms — itchy ears and paws combined with loose stools — are a classic presentation for a food intolerance rather than environmental allergies. The ear and paw pattern especially points to diet. Three months is long enough that it's worth being deliberate about this. Before I suggest anything, I want to understand the communal meals better — do you know what's currently in the food they're all eating? Is it a dry kibble, wet food, or a mix?
It's a dry kibble, a cheap bulk-buy farm supply brand — honestly I'm not even sure of the exact name. Probably chicken or beef based. The farmer just orders it in big bags.
inparticular.ai
That's really useful — cheap bulk kibble is almost always chicken or beef based, sometimes both, and those are the two most common dietary triggers in dogs. Here's what I'd suggest: rather than trying to isolate her completely from communal feeding, which sounds impractical, switch the entire group to a single novel protein food for 8 weeks. Salmon and potato is a good choice — it avoids the common chicken and beef proteins, it's affordable enough to feed multiple dogs, and it's easy to find in bulk. The product I'd point you to is Harringtons Salmon & Potato dry dog food — it's widely available on Amazon UK in large bags, genuinely free from common allergens, and reasonably priced for multi-dog households. If her symptoms clear up over 8 weeks, you've identified the problem. If they don't improve at all, it's more likely environmental and worth a vet visit at that point.
That actually makes sense — switching the whole group is much easier than trying to separate her. Would the other dogs be fine on it too, even though they don't have any issues?
inparticular.ai
Completely fine — salmon and potato is a perfectly balanced complete food and healthy for any adult dog. The other working dogs won't be missing anything nutritionally. One thing to flag: switch gradually over about a week, mixing the new kibble into the old, especially with working dogs — sudden diet changes can cause loose stools in dogs that were previously fine, and you don't want to confuse that with your Corgi's existing symptoms. Also worth keeping a simple log of her scratching and stool consistency so you can actually tell whether things are improving by week four or five.
Good tip about the gradual switch. And if she's still scratching after 8 weeks on the salmon food, that's when I should see the vet?
inparticular.ai
Exactly right. If there's no meaningful improvement after 8 weeks on a clean novel protein diet, dietary intolerance is much less likely and a vet can check for environmental allergies, mites, or other causes. But genuinely — given the symptoms and the likely chicken or beef base she's been eating, there's a reasonable chance the salmon and potato switch will make a clear difference. Worth trying before going down the diagnostic route.
