I have a 13 month old Border Terrier. He's been perfectly fit and well since birth, he was being fed Millies Wolfheart dry kibble. He occasionally had fresh cooked chicken as a treat and for recall training, along with the usual dentastix, yakkers chews etc etc.
2 weeks before Christmas he had an episode of being very, very sick. When the vomiting went beyond 24 hours and I saw flecks of blood/tissue in it, I took him to the vet. Vet saw he'd lost nearly half a kilo - the instant diagnosis was possible inflammatory bowel disease, put him on 100% hypoallergenic elimination diet immediately for a minimum of 6 weeks.
I thought that was a bit drastic based on a single incident but did as instructed and very grudgingly started introducing the prescription diet (which he loathed) over the next week.
But at one point in that 7 days, we did some recall training and without thinking much about it, let him have a load of fresh chicken (as he would have done any time in the past with no problem).
3 days later the vomiting started, followed by diarrhoea this time and a lot of abdominal pain. Took him to emergency vet on Christmas night, confessed I'd given him chicken despite being told to eliminate all meat proteins for 6 weeks, and he had anti-emetics and painkillers. But he deteriorated and ended up staying in for the following night.
Recovered from that and he's been on 100% prescription diet for 5 weeks now, no exceptions - no more diarrhoea and he's put weight back on, but he's still vomiting virtually every other day. Initially it seemed like he was bringing up all the food he'd eaten that day, and he have pain - more recently it's just been froth and mucus with no pain, whenever it's been more than a few hours since he's eaten. He's getting 5 meals a day and if he's licky and nauseous at 5.30am he gets a specially baked biscuit! But he is otherwise normal, bouncy and full of energy, eating and drinking normally with normal poos.
But because he is vomiting even on a hypoallergenic diet, he went back to the vet yesterday for 3 day poo sample and blood tests, checking for parasites and low B12 and folates. I asked what the next step would be if all the tests were normal, and vet said he'd be referred to a specialist.
My confusion is this - if he's vomiting on a fully hydrolysed diet, then he's not reacting to anything in food is he - it's something else, or the auto-immune version of IBD rather than an intolerance or allergy. So why does he have to stay on the diet, which is difficult to get hold of at the moment - why can't I try introducing a single novel protein now, like every other dog with IBD or pancreatitis has to eat? A vet at the sister practice recommended we start him on fish so I ordered samples from Fish4Dogs, but original vet talked me out of it. We're stuck with Hills, the dry version of which he'll only eat if I cover it with the canned version, and now you can't get the cans in the UK...I've managed to get some Purina Hypoallergenic tins from the vet, but 3 teaspoons of that since yesterday and his poo is already getting yellowy and mushy.
It's frustrating, the dog was fine on the poultry free food I was giving him before.