Any sudden change in behavior, hiding, crying, vomiting, diarrhea, lethargy, anemia, or anything like that - if your dog has had some sudden change in the way it's behaving - is enough reason to call your veterinarian and take them in to have a visit.

At that visit, we are very likely to ask a history. Have they been outside where they might've gotten into a mushroom? Have they been inside? What do you feed them? Do they get people food? Anything like that is important, particularly with puppies, because they're known to eat things that they shouldn't.

Don’t try to figure out any sudden change by yourself. Ask for some help, or you can call poison control because there is a dog poison control as well.

That should never happen. You should pick dog foods to begin with that you know you can trust. Anything from Purina and Hills and Royal Canin make excellent choices. And you should feed them appropriately within the guidelines that they recommend or that your veterinarian has suggested. But if you fed them something and they vomited it up, they had diarrhea, they were lethargic—all of those are good clues that that was not sitting well with them at all.

We use an elimination diet when we think a dog has either a gastrointestinal or a skin problem related to its diet. When dogs have an allergy or a hypersensitivity to food, it's generally the protein, the beef, the chicken.

And of course, the most common protein that we feed dogs sometimes is milk protein. It's not ever very often a grain that’s causing you hypersensitivity. So a hypoallergenic food or elimination food is picking a food that has a single protein, and probably one that you've never been on before.

So if you're always feeding chicken, we might try a lamb food and also a single carbohydrate source so we can eliminate all the other possibilities. Then we feed them that for about 12 weeks, during which time your dog's GI problems or skin issues are hopefully better.

Then you can then slowly add back a few things. And if the dog does well on them, then that is not something they were allergic to. So that's how we do that.

We really don't recommend that you feed them human food. There are so many needs for dogs that you should feed them the particular lifestyle that they are in. And then they can be supplemented with some dog treats, for sure, but people food - even things like grapes that are healthy for us - can be very toxic to dogs.

So the best thing to do is just, across the board, say that you're not going to feed your dog people food. They'll be less likely to become overweight. They won't beg from the table so much. They will be healthier if you follow that recommendation.