Excellent advice Dottie and thank you for starting the thread.
Might I add also it is useful to make a note of the specific protein being fed to a dog, so for domestic fowl this includes chicken, goose, duck, or turkey and whichever of these within that poultry group is being eaten is the one to record. It’s worthwhile as dogs may become intolerant of any one, or several, of these proteins and to record which are being eaten makes it so much easier to know which ones are to avoid feeding to the dog.
Also record the individual fish that is named on the ingredient list, if fish is fed to a dog. The list includes salmon, cod, sardines, herring, pilchards, hake, char, mackerel, tuna, pollock, flounder, coley, krill, menhaden and trout and for sure there are others that are not named here ......
Notably sometimes fish may be named as the oil (of the fish) or the liver oil (of the fish) which is being used in the dog food; for example salmon oil. And this too ought to be in the notes which are kept to record what a dog is eating; the reason being is that if a dog is intolerant to salmon then regardless of salmon's appearance, either as one of the main ingredients, or as the oil (of salmon) simply by eating the food a dog would still potentially throw up intolerant reactions.
The same principle is true when feeding a meat protein - that is, to keep a record of which of the individually named meats are being fed. The variety of meat proteins (including what is known as game) is increasing, as expected over time, and includes beef, lamb, pork, goat, venison, kangaroo, buffalo, quail, partridge, ostrich, pheasant, bison, rabbit, reindeer, and wild boar and others for sure!
It is also worthwhile noting if there are eggs in the food as I have known dogs who cannot tolerate egg and who will also react if egg is used in vaccine preparations.
Dogs are individuals of course and it therefore seems reasonable to expect the possibility that dogs may be able to tolerate a particular ingredient in one form and yet not in another version. An example of such a situation was of a dog who could tolerate a food such as organic (interestingly chicken was the protein) though he showed intolerant reactions if ever the chicken was not organic!! This may have been due to any number of reasons…nonetheless it was not an easy task to find out that this was indeed the trigger for that dog’s issues! Again it pays to keep complete notes of specific ingredients that are being eaten by our dogs.