Fresh Dog Food Elimination Diet Guide
If you suspect that your dog is suffering from a food allergy, this guide is for you. Whether your dog is scratching constantly, dealing with recurring ear infections, licking paws, or has an upset stomach, food could be the cause, and it’s important to figure out whether your dog suffers from a food allergy or not. And the only way to know that for sure is to do a so-called “elimination diet”.
An elimination diet for dogs is the most effective way to identify food allergy in dogs and improve your dog’s overall dog diet and gut health.
Here's everything you need to know to do it properly.
Disclaimer: This guide is not meant to substitute veterinary advice.
What Is an Elimination Diet?
An elimination diet is a structured feeding test. The idea is simple: remove all the old food and replace it with a single new recipe that your dog has never eaten before. This means that your dog has never been exposed to the allergens contained in that new recipe. You then feed only this new food for 8 weeks, and if your dog improves, something in the old diet was causing the problem.
This process is also known as a dog allergy elimination diet and is widely recommended by vets to diagnose food allergy in dogs.
It's important to highlight how this only works if the diet is kept completely strict. For example, if your dog were to be allergic to chicken, and you were to give him or her just one treat containing chicken during the elimination diet, that might invalidate weeks of progress.
In order to do everything properly, read this guide fully and make sure everyone in the household is on board.
Why Start with Kangaroo?
We recommend doing the elimination diet with a novel protein such as a kangaroo recipe. Choose a recipe based on a novel protein, meaning a type of meat most dogs have not encountered before. And since your dog's immune system has not been exposed to the kangaroo allergen, it is far less likely to trigger an allergic reaction.
However, if your dog has eaten kangaroo in the past, choose a different protein, always one that your dog has not consumed in the past. Chicken and beef are extremely common in pet food and pet treats, so it’s less likely that those will work. From our recipes, Lamb or Turkey are often good alternatives to Kangaroo.
Getting Ready
Before starting an elimination diet, proper preparation is essential to ensure accurate results:
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Clear out all other food: Remove treats, chews, flavoured supplements, and any other snack that is not made with the chosen protein.
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Tell everyone: every family member, dog sitter, and anyone who interacts with your dog needs to know that no extras are going to be allowed for the next 8 weeks, with no exceptions. If you are going to feed him/her treats, they need to be made with the same novel protein of the main food of the diet (e.g., Kangaroo treats).
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Buy enough food: you'll need enough of the chosen recipe for 8 weeks. Make sure to always have enough food available, since if you were to run out of it and being forced to feed some other protein, the diet would be invalidated.
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Check supplement ingredients: some tablets and supplements have flavourings that contain proteins that your dog might be allergic to. Ask your vet if your dog's current supplements are okay to continue to be used during the trial.
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Talk to your vet: always consult your vet before starting an elimination diet.
This is the core of the whole process. For 8 weeks, your dog must eat only the chosen recipe. The only treats allowed are ones made with the same protein of the chosen recipe.
How to transition:
If your dog is not used to fresh food, don't switch overnight. We do have another guide that explains how to transition to fresh food and you can follow those guidelines linked here.
If your dog is already used to fresh food, then it’s just a matter of changing the type of recipe. You could potentially do this both abruptly or change gradually over a week. We recommend the latter if your dog suffers from gut health issues – however these might also be triggered by an adverse reaction to the old diet, so moving on to the new diet quickly might be very beneficial in some cases. So while we usually recommend a slow transition to decrease the likelihood of upset stomach, in some cases an abrupt change could actually be a better choice. When you discuss the elimination diet with your vet, always ask them how to transition, and they will be able to give you personalised recommendations based on the specific case of your dog.
What to watch for
Start keeping a simple diary from day one. Note your dog's:
Tracking these symptoms helps confirm whether your elimination diet for dogs is working effectively.
Many dogs begin to show improvement within a few weeks. But the full trial needs to run for the complete 8 weeks to get a reliable result. So do not cut it short, even if your dog seems better early on.
Once the elimination phase is complete and your dog has improved, it's time to test other proteins one by one. This tells you exactly which foods your dog can and can't tolerate. Remember to always introduce only one new protein at a time. If you were to introduce multiple proteins at the same time and an adverse reaction were to occur, you would not be able to understand which protein caused the symptoms.
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-Choose one new recipe (e.g., chicken).
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-Add a small spoonful of the new recipe to your dog's usual meal (e.g., kangaroo) for 3 days.
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-Watch closely for one week. Look for itching, paw licking, skin redness, ear irritation, vomiting, or diarrhoea.
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-If no reaction: gradually increase the proportion of the new recipe over a few days until it becomes 100% of daily meals.
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-Wait one week before testing the next protein.
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-Repeat with each new recipe — for example, after testing chicken, move on to turkey.
Long Term Management
Once your dog food elimination diet is complete, long-term diet planning becomes easier and more effective.
By the end of the process, you'll have a clear picture of what your dog can and can't eat.
Any recipe that caused no reaction is safe to include in your dog's long-term diet. Don't feel you need to stick to just one recipe forever: once you know which proteins are safe, you can rotate between those recipes to give your dog food variety.
Any protein that instead triggered dermatological, gastrointestinal or other symptoms should be avoided from now onwards, both in the main recipe as well as in any treats you give to your dog.
If your dog's symptoms don't improve at all after the full elimination phase, or if new symptoms appear during the trial, speak to your vet. Food allergy isn't the only possible cause of skin and digestive issues: parasites, environmental allergens, infections, and other conditions can produce very similar signs. Your vet can help rule these out and guide the next steps.