Lucy Jerram

And if you have an allergy to demodex, then there might be an issue there.

Yeah.

So they can be allergic to the fleas that they're infected with, but they can also be allergic to food, different food proteins generally.

So beef or chicken might be more common there or environmental allergens as well.

So food allergens, we look at doing a food trial and that involves giving them a hypoallergenic diet.

It's called a hydrolyzed protein.

It's not particularly tasty, so it's quite hard to get your dog to stick to it.

And they need to be on that for up to eight weeks to determine whether it is a food allergy.

Only that.

So no scavenging, no treats.

So...

Having said that, if you have lived with an itchy dog for any kind of time, you're invested in helping fix that problem.

So owners will go for it.

And it is any kind of allergy.

They are lifelong conditions we're managing.

We're not actually ever going to cure them potentially.

So whatever we can do to keep them more comfortable.

Exactly.

And it's really hard to remove any kind of environmental allergen from your dog.

I was talking to a colleague on the weekend and she was saying they managed to diagnose an ash allergy