I am struggling to find a food that works for my 10 month old male German Shorthaired Pointer. He had been fed on Natural Instinct raw food since a puppy, but has always had a bit of a sensitive stomach. He stayed with family for a few days whilst we were away and unfortunately they just fed him what their own dog was on ( :-\ I know!) which was Pedigree Chum. When we got him back home he had an incredibly upset stomach, with very runny poo and went off his food entirely for about 4 days. I started feeding chicken and rice which got him going again, but he wouldn’t touch his raw food.
I then tried Lily’s Kitchen tinned food - which he loved, but as well as doing some serious damage to my bank account, his poo became very very loose again. To try and get his tummy back to normal I have gradually introduced his raw food again, (natural instinct chicken) and whilst that has helped get it back to normal again, he is still having a little bit of diarrhoea each day.
I’m not sure if it could be allergies or something else - does anyone have any ideas? I’m happy to try him on something else, dry or wet, and cost isn’t a huge factor (although at his weight 3 tins of Lily’s Kitchen per day was becoming a bit of a concern!)
Any thoughts or advice would be hugely appreciated.
It could be worth starving for 24- 36hrs and giving some probiotics for a few days in the form of pro-kolin, or goat/sheep milk natural full fat yoghurt, not cows milk yoghurt, if you don’t have any pro-kolin. Then either start with the chicken rice again or Natural instinct.
The starving gives their digestive system a rest and the probiotics helps restore the natural balance
Hello and welcome to the forum, It seems a shame if you have to change foods if it was working well for your dog before. I think Schnauday’s advice is good and worth a try before having to try different foods which may cause further upset to your dog’s digestive system. Natures instinct has a nice short list of ingredients so hopefully things will settle back down again.
I too have fallen foul to cost. I feed a tin of natures menu per day along with wainwright’s dried to help with the cost.have you tried any dried foods or is your preference wet?
Hello - welcome to the forum. I have read and re-read your opening post and I can’t help but think that your dog might have a problem that needs veterinary attention. Just wondering if he might have swallowed something or maybe has a touch of colitis.
The advice about giving ProKolin is sound because some vets use this as the starting point for diarrhoea anyway so if you have tried this for several days they can move on to the second line which may be an antibiotic. It’s therefore useful to have some of this (or similar) in the house. I try not to starve mine if I can help it but I do exactly the same as you did i.e. give them well cooked rice and chicken. I also give white fish and scrambled egg. If the dog is not milk intolerant, plain organic yoghurt can be given too - I use the Yeo Valley one.
Some dogs are intolerant of chicken but it doesn’t sound like that is the case with yours because when you gave him cooked rice and chicken he seemed better.
There seems to be something that is not quite right; a dog that is fed raw should have small, firm stools. I really think that it would be best to see the vet and have him checked out. Mention that you have been giving him raw chicken. The vet may want to look for Giardia so a stool specimen might need to be sent to the laboratory for culture. Giardia is easily treated with medication.
Thank you all so much for your warm welcome as well as your help and advice, it really is much appreciated.
When he is on the raw food his first stool of the day with be small and firm, but he will always have a second about an hour later that is runny, or almost a bit mucus-y (apologies for Too Much Information!)
We’ve tried dried food before but that has a tendency to go straight through him too. I’ll definitely try the pro-biotic, but I’ll pop him along to the vet again to try to look into it in more detail - after coming back from the family and not eating I took him to the vet and he was given some pro-biotic and told to keep on the chicken and rice for a week. However they didn’t look into it any further despite me asking if they would need to test any samples or not. I’ll go back and push a bit harder for it.
It’s hard to convince people that there’s much wrong with him at times as he is so full of energy (typical puppy, and gsp!) and is in great condition despite this problem.
Thanks again for your advice, hopefully I can get him right soon!
It is good that you are going back to the vet. Before you go, it might be worthwhile asking them for a sterile container for a stool sample and then you can show them the runny poo. I find that it is helpful for vets to see the thing you are concerned about. Also, they can send it off to the laboratory. At least that would rule out Giardia and other infections such as campylobacter and salmonella. We automatically assume problems like this are food related but as your dog was previously fine on the raw food, perhaps it is not that at all. Please let us know how you get on.