Sloppy poos and smelly farts? There is a test for that.

If you have been around for a while and especially if you follow us on instagram (@rooroos.adventures) then you will know that we have pretty much struggled since day one with Roo's tummy. Soft poos, sloppy ones, horrible clear the room farts. We have tried switching her onto so many different foods, changing training treats, trying probiotics but nothing has managed to clear things up.

As Roo will soon be approaching a year old we started to look into adult foods to put her on. We have figured out through trial and error that Roo seems to have an issue with peas so we were trying to avoid those (harder than it seems). There are just so much food brands to choose from and we decided we wanted to make the most informed decision we could, so we brought a pet food intolerance test from Pet Food Intolerance . They offer an essential and premium test. The essential test is tested against 45 food items and 15 non food items and is £40.00. The premium test is tested against 152 food items and 48 non food items, you can also send in a sample of their own food (or something else) that you would like to be tested as well. This test cost £50.00, both tests seem to be on offer quite regularly though and we got the premium test for £27.50.

For the test itself, you just send in 5 to 6 of your pets hair. So simple. They provide you with a prepaid envelope to send in back in. From the day we ordered the test to getting our results took about a week and a half.

Roo's results, it turns out she has a sensitive reaction (the highest level) to bananas, butternut squash, corn, turkey, maize and a few other food items that you typically wouldn't feed your dog anyway like blue cheese and BBQ sauce! These items they recommend you remove completely from your dogs diet as they are unable to properly process them. The biggest shock was turkey as the food we had her on (Nature's menu Puppy wet food), is chicken and turkey based!

The next level of reaction is mild (they advise you also remove these from their diet but they could be fed occasionally). Roo has a mild reaction to barley, chicken fat, gluten, duck, ham, lamb, lambs liver, peas, pigs liver, soy, sunflower oil, trout, vegetable oil and a few others, again not things you typically feed your dog like mayo and almond nuts.

Trying to find dog food that doesn't include anything on that list is tough and has been a struggle. Yes we could feed raw but a lot of raw food has the meat options that she can't have. For now we are going to switch her over to Skinner's Salmon and Veg adult food. We had the chicken option tested and it came back with a mild reaction. As well as Fishmongers Finest dry food. Hoping mixing wet and dry might firm things up a little.

The road to finding the best food for Roo is far from over, but we definitely feel a lot more informed about what to be avoiding.

If you think your pet has any intolerances, we would 100% recommend getting a test. Without it, we would have probably put Roo on a food that contained a lot of things that she struggles to process.

We will keep you updated on the journey.