Gluten and barley

Question
Reading over some of the answers you have written to others, I see that you do not like gluten in a dog's diet and you do not favor barley.  I have two questions:  (1) do you disfavor barley because it has gluten, or for some other reason; and (2) could you explain more fully why gluten is bad?

Answer
Hi Mel,
Sorry for the delayed reply, very busy time right now and I will probably have to go on "vacation" again. To answer your question; I dislike the gluten content in barley, yes; and the problems associated with longterm, daily ingestion of gluten in the dog is *probably* intestinal hyperpermeability.  


http://www.anapsid.org/cnd/diffdx/leakygut2.html
I'm personally quite convinced that longterm use of foods that contain gluten is pathogenic in the canine. Many factors support this theory, most notably the cases of food intolerance, allergy and IBD I see whereby removal of gluten is a major component of improvement.It makes sense to me that if so many omnivores (us!) are adversely affected by gluten(in varying degrees), a carnivorous species like the dog ought to have even less ability to cope with it. The bottom line for me is I see dogs improve when the gluten is taken out. And since we don't *need* it in the diet,and it may well cause harm - why use it at all?

Does that make sense?

Catherine