My 3 y/o Rottie (Maisie) has developed acid reflux. She will randomly throughout the day have a watery regurgitation in her mouth, and sometimes in the evening before her dinner and after some high intensity exercise and drinking lots of water, she will bring a lot of water up as well as yellow foam.
I think this may have been triggered by emergency surgery when not fasted.
I’ve tried lots of foods, and some seem to be slightly worse than others. Vet put her on a GI kibble (and I opted to used Pooch & Mutt rather than a big name brand). I started feeding that 7 times a day and that almost instantly cured her, and it she was still ok when I dropped down to 2 feeds a day. However, back on normal food and her reflux is back. It does seem to happen most often when she has just woken from a sleep.
I don’t trust the vet recommendation when it comes to nutrition. I’d like to feed cold press if possible, her teeth and poops are so much better on cold press than anything else.
Hello and welcome to the forum. I have a dog with similar symptoms so I know how frustrating this can be. Your increase in the number of feeds is sensible and I too have found that it helps enormously. My dog has four meals a day, the last immediately before bed.
I find that original Kefir yogurt with meals is also helpful. The other addition that I sometimes give (at bedtime) is Dorwest Herbs Tree Barks Powder. This is a mucilage. My Pet Nutritionist has a fairly new product called Gut Guardian. I haven’t tried it on my dog as I haven’t needed to. It is a tad expensive but it looks good and if it works then it is worth the cost. My Pet Nutritionist has a website and Facebook page.
It’s worth trying a slow feeder and raise it if possible. Dog needs to rest after a meal and obviously try and prevent him from drinking a lot of water.
Cold pressed food is a good idea because it is easily digested. When I fed this it was some years ago and there was only the Markus Muhle varieties on the market but they are good products so worth looking at. They are high fibre and lowish on fat so could be useful for your dog. There are many more types now and if you go to the AADF Facebook group the members who use other CP products will be able to advise. In your case, I would be inclined to soak the food in tepid water as it can make the dog thirsty and you don’t want him to have to drink a lot of water all at once.
Lastly, with my dog I have had to succumb to half a cimetidine tablet at night (my dog usually has the regurgitation early morning). Arguably, it’s better to manage the condition without medication but sometimes these things are necessary.
Not really much further forward tbh. I have tried her on Pouch & Mutt GI food which did stop her reflex (but she obviously can’t stay on that permanently). She still has reflux on every other food I’ve tried, Wilson’s (cold press), Southend Dog Training (cold press), Gentle (cold press), Bentleys Taste of the Ocean (kibble) and Tribal (cold press).
She was the worst on the Bentleys such that I had to stop feeding that (anyone want a almost full 14kg bag?). Reading up on GERD and looking at the nutritional information on all the food I’ve tried, it looked like perhaps the foods were too high in protein (P&M GI has quite low protein and Bentleys is high) so I looked for the lowest protein cold press I could find - Tribal Turkey. She’s been on that a few days but still having reflux. I’m getting super down by it all. On the plus side, she loves the Tribal food and her poops are perfect on it.