I've spoken to my vet re. doing a Yorktest on my Belgian shepherd. She is very willing to do this, although she did say that often results from Yorktest don't correlate with the results from exclusion diets - she didn't give any more info but I presume this is why it's not always offered straight away.

My problem is that, having been to the Yorktest site, I understand that if the animal is already on an exclusionn diet, the test may not pick up the excluded foods as allergens :(

Banya isn't on an exclusion diet as such, but IS on Hills ID and has pretty good bowel movements and no sign of her original colitis problem. So I wasn't sure if this would count in a sense as an "exclusion diet" as she presumably is not being exposed to foods which upset her at the moment. So the circulating antibody level may be low in her system.

I would be very interested to hear from anyone who has had a Yorktest done in a similar situation -Ie knowing the problem is under the surface, but the dog showing no symptoms because of the current diet.

I have emailed Yorktest over this but not had a reply yet. Anyway I'd be keen to hear from any other dog owner who has any thoughts re the test in my situation :)

Lindsay
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I had the food allergy test done on one of my cockers and I am fairly sure we were trialling a prescription diet at the time of the blood sample. It was a couple of years ago now so can't say for definite.  I don't understand how the current diet would affect results - my boys' result came back with a LOT of intolerances, two of which were beef and cows milk. He has never had either of those in his diet but they still came up.

Hi Gill,

Many thanks for the reply, I was beginning to think no-one had had this experience! It's hard to know what to do for the best sometimes.

Can I ask please if you found the Yorktest of benefit?

Do you have a rough idea as to how long you may have been on the prescription diet before testing?

Sorry for all the questions :P

Odd about the beef and cow's milk... I wonder how they came up?

Lindsay
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Hi Lindsay,

He wouldn't have been on the prescription diet for very long before the blood sample - probably just about a week.

I did find the test to be very beneficial, in fact I wish I had done it sooner - would have saved a small fortune trying every food on the market ;-) When his results came back, they sent a food chart which basically tells you what foods contain what ingredients. For him, there was only one suitable food due to the number of intolerances he has and that was the Royal Canin Sensitivity Control dry food (I was trying him on the tins) so I just changed him onto the dry and he's been on it ever since.

Thanks Gill, that was very helpful.

Hope your boy continues to do well :)

Lindsay
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