Gsdxalaskan malamute severe diahorea problems food advice

[sheba_mommy82]

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I currently have a German Sheppard cross with alaskan malamute who is 3 in June. We found out last year that she has hip displasia which was bad enough, she was put on loxicam for long term use. About 4 mths ago she developed severe diahorea and only way i can describe what it looks like is to say "cow pat" and she was going between 5-15 times a day. Took her to vets and they thought she may have lymphoma and had her in for an ultrasound which detected that two of her lymph nodes in her intestines were enlarged. they decided that at this time they do not look cancerous. They have put her on a 3 week course of antibiotics which she is a week into and was on Hills Prescription ID wet food mixed with boiled rice for first week, she seemed to be getting better so they suggested putting her back onto her normal diet of mixed wet food and dry biscuits and now she is runny again, but not sure if it is food or antibiotics or the original infection they are treating her for causing it. She has already dropped from 35-27kg and has since put 2kg back on and is now 29kg. they did suggest changing her to prescription diet problem is the cost of the food, being a big dog a 12kg of hiolls id complete food is £50 approx and tinned food cheapest i have found online is £2.10 per tin. I want to do everything i can for her because i have raised her from a 7 week old pup and she is like my 4th child but was wondering whether anyone could suggest cheaper alternative to the prescription diet that wont keep upsetting her stomach, she normally has butchers tinned food 1 tin split in two a day with wagg mixed in but she is not tolerating it. Upto now I have tried earls (aldi brand) dry complete and tinned food, pedigree chum mixer and tinned food, chappie with rice, which she didnt enjoy and tried to refuse to eat. They have said that if her stomach doesnt calm down they will refer her to specialist vet to determine if it is food related or underlying medical problem but need to get her under control somehow before she loses more weight and becomes seriously ill. Any suggestions would be gratefully received. thanks

 

[Rosie33]

I have a good friend who is a Veterinary Nurse at the Practice I use. She tells me that Vets will sell Hill's Prescription Diet because they get a sizeable commission on it, but it actually is no better than any other bland diet.

My Jack Russell suffers with IBD/Colitis and she often has similar bowel problems to your girl.

I feed her either chicken and rice or chicken and potato when she's like this and a few days usually puts her right.

You can buy chicken portions cheaply in the frozen sections of most supermarkets.

Keep a careful eye on her too for picking up bits of rubbish when you're walking her. My Rosie is a little monster for scavenging and that's often the cause of her having a flare up with her bowel problems.

Hope your girl is soon better.

Susan xx

 

[sheba_mommy82]

thanks susan, have also tried bland diet of chicken and rice and chicken and pasta and has no affect on her motions, she was getting better but now she is runny again, only difference is that she is not going as often as she was, on average it between 3-7 times compared to what it was before that is an improvement, i think i will have to try her back on chappie as she will eat it with dry biscuits and see how she goes, dont wanna keep chopping and changing her diet but vet said it could take a while to get correct combination to suit her. i hope she is better soon too, she breaking my heart. xx

 

[Rosie33]

If she won't eat the Chappie, it may well be worth trying fish, if you haven't already, as Chappie is fish rather than meat based I think.

Maybe tinned sardines or mackerel, with all the oil dried off on kitchen paper.

It is so upsetting to see them ill, poor girl.

She sounds as though she's in safe hands with you though.

Susan xx

 

[KateandSam]

Sorry to hear of all your problems with your lovely dog . Although Chappie is often maligned as a main food , many Vets say that it is the very best food for a dog with intestinal problems, make sure its the original one though and if its suiting , then stick on it, you can always add some cooked potato to it as a tummy filler or cooked rice . Hope she is a lot better soon

Kate x

 

[Gwenoakes]

Hi - I could have written your post myself, OP.

My daughter has a Malamute X Northern Inuit bitch that is now 13 months old. From the off set we have had probs with her. I wont bore you with all of them, but IBD was diagnosed at Davies Vets in Herts back in February this year, after biopsies were taken. They recommended the Royal Canin duck and tapioca sensitivity which was fine to start with, then she stopped eating it, so we put a desert spoon of Chappie original tinned food and made a gravy and poured it over which once again was fine for a few days, then she stopped eating. We then went to James Wellbeloved hypoallergenic the lamb, turkey and one other. The turkey went through her like a dose of salts, so now have just tried Chappie kibble which she is still eating. When first weighed she was 39kg and is now 34.5kg.

She has always burped a lot, passed wind that smelt vile at the other end and been sore after eating and never really looked 'right'. She was brought up on the BARF diet including processed vegetables which she loved. Have just read on the net today that itching is another sign of IBD too which is something else she has always done, in fact we were constantly looking for fleas.

She had two seasons the first at 6 months which lasted 5 weeks and the second two months later which lasted 7 weeks, both extremely heavy and culminated in open pyo for which she was rushed in as an emergency to be spayed. The vet thought she might be Vit B12 deficient so she is having two injections a week. You cannot overdose on Vit B12 as it is water based and any overflow will pass right out the other end. Vit B12 deficiency leads to heavy bleeding, legarthy and loss of appetite, and muscle waste, so all added up when looking at how she had been.

Also she has been diagnosed with hip dysplasia and is going to hydro, stepping over poles, hill work and only lead walks of up to 15 mins twice a day.

I really, really feel for you, it is a total nightmare. I have just been told tonight of someone else whose dog has had IBD diagnosed and he has found another food that is not really known about that has worked for his dog. Wont be able to make contact and find out what for a couple of days, but when I do I will put the info on here if thats OK.

Also looked on line and there is a site in US www.veterinarypracticenews.com if you go on this and put in the search 'whip worms' it will bring up info on a vet who has researched the use of pig whip worms as a way of human and animal help for IBD. It sounds gross, but I have left a comment with my email to see if there has been any further progress as we are open to anything within reason if it will help.

Sorry, didnt realise I had rambled soooo much......

 

[Andrea s]

Hi I'm no expert but i do have years of experience with feeding a dog with IBD, we have 4 Labs 3 of whom are rescue, Inca we took on as a foster dog for a rescue due to the fact she had spent 12 months with a family having been adopted only to be returned due to her tummy troubles, the original adopters had run up huge vets bills trying to get to the bottom of her tummy issues to no avail, they were feeding her Burns ( high quality and costly ) to no avail, she would raid the bins, break into cupboards, eat from the compost heap and eat hers and their other dogs poo, all because she was starving hungry, everything she ate passed through her, she was skin and bones when she arrived to us, like an emaciated whippet.

the reason we took her on is because i knew this would be solved with diet, that it wasn't something any more sinister than an intollerance, for years now i have been feeding a natural diet or BARF as it's commonly known, i switched to this after discovering via another forum that so many brands of dog food contain a load of crap !!!

Once you start digging around it's scary to see what is passed as being suitable food for our pets, the additives and preservatives that go into that food too, ones that have been banned by the EU from the human food chain because of their side effects and links to cancer!

As food manufacturers began to realise people wanted convenience when feeding their pets so came the "complete diet" what a load of balls ! a dehydrated piece of dried up kibble that contains little good protein and an array of non digestible ingredients such as grain, by products of the sugar industry ( beet pulp) amongst other fillers, these fillers ( stuff to bulk the food out ) is indigestible to most dogs,but in most dogs they just pass it out the other end as waste, have you ever noticed how large your dogs poo's are ????

to some dogs though the grain and other ingredients in manufactured food can and often causes a problem within the gut, causing a sensitive environment where almost anything that passes through is undigested due to the inflamation within the gut and intestinal tract, this becomes a viscous circle and as the owner we then get told to try allsorts of special diets which cost a fortune and don't work.

Short of testing to find out what your dog is sensitive to it is a case of trial and error to find something which suits, which is why feeding a biologically appropriate diet for the species of the animal is important, not whether it comes in an easy to dispense dried kibble or can.

Dogs are omnivores, primarily requiring a protein based diet of raw meat ( a dog would not cook its own food ) if it were to find its own food it would eat small mammals and some vegetation, we can replicate this diet without it being a nightmare or costing a fortune by feeding a BARF type diet, without going into a huge lesson in how to feed a raw diet it basically requires you to feed a variety of raw meats including offal with a complementry helping every now and then of veg, the odd raw egg, a bit of fruit, etc. think what your dog is and what it should eat , not what we've become brainwashed into believing is right and complete !

Inca had not pooed normally for over 12 months, she had at best Mr whippy consistancy poo, at worse it was liquid, 3 days of feeding raw minced chicken is all it took to sort her out, she was then introduced to other meats such as minced lamb, beef, tripe, liver heart, kidney, it sounds daunting but it really isn't, you buy a small chest freezer ( we got ours for £30 from a free adds paper) you start off by buying from the larger pet shops who have a freezer section so you can try it out prior to ordering in bulk from a supplier, I can feed 4 Labs for a month on £50 which against a better quality dried food a 15 kilo bag could cost £60 and it would only last me 2 weeks if i was lucky.

then all it requires is you to defrost it and feed it raw ( do not cook it ) there are some great books you can get on feeding raw, there are some differing opinions over whether to suppliment with fruit and veg etc, but once your into it you can add what you like within lines of what a dog can eat, some things such as onion, grapes, raisins you have to avoid but his you will learn as you research .

It really isn't hard it soon becomes second nature, and it couldn't be more healthier for your dog as it's what they are designed to eat, in lots of cases a dogs IBD trigger is grain or carbohydrate hence feeding things such as pasta,potato and rice don't seem to work even when for lots of people it's a tried and tested formula to help settle a dicky tum, some dogs have a strong gut and so the cheapest of foods is fine for them but when you get a sensetive tum it's often not known how to deal with it without resorting to expensive vet prescribed diets, vets get paid a commision on foods they sell, they get taught a small amount about diet and nutrition when training and often this sction of their training is sponsored by the big food brands so of course will be weighted in favour of feeding kibble or manufactured food.

Another thing to bare in mind is that antibiotics kill the guts natural flora/bacteria, and so whenever antibiotics are prescribed it is prudent to give a suppliment of pro and pre biotics to re inhabit the gut with the correct enzymes, if this ballance is disrupted then food cannot be absorbed through the intetines effectively rendering the food useless and resulting in the dog passing 80 % of its food out as waste not digested, you can thicken up the dogs food by adding Kaolin ( which is effectively French Clay ) its a white chalky powder which is harmless and tasteless, added to the food it helps to bind it making it travel more slowly through the gut .

You can buy Kaolin off Amazon a large tub is about £8 and you can buy human pro biotics from health food shops or online, you cannot over dose on these i usually give a couple of capsules as routine to all my dogs at least once a week.

I really feel that you could make huge progress with your dog if you were armed with the correct info, i would be glad to talk to you if it's easier as i think i have now typed war and peace lol.

please get in touch if anything i have said requires a telephone conversation.

Best wishes

Andrea

 

[eingana]

My GSD Molly had chronic projectile diarrhoea on every food we tried too, and she was eventually sorted out completely by a full raw diet. She has natural live yoghurt twice a week to keep her good bacteria up, but it's been so long since she had a stomach upset now that she's probably having it because she likes it rather than because it's good for her

There are so many dogs with dietary problems that I just can't recommend trying a decent raw diet highly enough. We tried raw as a last resort and I really wish we'd tried it earlier because it would have saved a year of faffing around with food that didn't stay inside the dog long enough to give her any nutrition and a GSD that was so thin that she fitted through a cat flap (which is so very wrong) and whose fur was broken off so short that we didn't even realise that she was long haired.

Honestly- she had diarrhoea on everything until we started on raw tripe and even though you're advised that they could have the squits for the first week or two on a raw diet, Molly's stopped on day 2 and never returned.

Molly weighs 35kg as her healthy and stable weight now, and eats 500g of DAF 'Meaty Mince' which is mixed meat, offal, bone and blood, and a chicken carcass or back as her daily food. She also has a daily dental chew, a few bits of dried black pudding as treats, a little yoghurt a couple of times a week and, if she's good, she also gets a bit of cheese if we're cutting some for a sandwich. She's also an inveterate fruit thief and has been known to nick an entire punnet of plums, but being a good girl, always brings me the punnet back afterwards

I know so many GSDs, GSD crosses and Northern Inuit/crosses that just don't tolerate prepared dog food that it's really quite astonishing that vets and pet food companies still think that it's OK to push the stuff.

I hope you find an answer to your problems soon