Category: Animal House
This past June I received my first guide dog, a two-year-old male golden retriever, from GEB. Ever since I've received him, I've had to go to the vet each month to have his anal glands expressed. I did some research on google and it says this problem could be the result of soft stool and Dogs' problem with digesting grain. Kipling's stool is not consistently firm. What I mean is that I have occasionally picked up firm stool from him, but this is usually not the case. I am considering switching Kip's diet of Iams Proactive Health Lamb and Rice to Wellness core Original Recipe. I asked his puppy raisers about it and they said that I should consider the fact that Kip has gone through a lot in the past nine months between formal guide dog training, getting used to me, getting used to the environment around my parents' house, and now getting used to my college campus and Grand Rapids. I understand that, but I just want to resolve this issue as soon as possible. My raisers also asked their vet about it and he recommended giving Kip the adult dosage for peptobismol for three days. Um?
I asked a fellow GEB classmate, who switched her dog to grain free food as soon as she got home, and also gives her dog baby carrots daily. She recommended giving him pumpkin or carrots to firm his stool. I will likely try the carrots, but not the pumpkin because I want to avoid canned products.
I will ask a vet here in Grand Rapids. And I already e-mailed my instructor at GEB over the weekend, but I have yet to hear from her.
As you guys can see, I'm extremely torn on what to do in this situation. I am just asking the opinion of everyone who has some applicable knowledge. I have never had a pet, and I want to do what's right for my dog. He has no other health-related issues besides a clearing ear infection.
I would like to hear from those who have their dogs on grain free diets, or have other possible solutions. Also, feel free to recommend other grain free dog foods, which i will research further of course.
Also look at ModernPaleo.com there is a way to go paleolithic for humans and their wolvenkind companion. Man and wolf ran together long before agriculture, so the paleolithic lifestyle (which is a lot of exercise not just food) makes sense for your wolf as well as you.
And you professional dog handlers already exercise your wolve more than the average porch hound anyway. Grain free is one component of paleo living for man and wolf. I admit it's hard to do for man in modern society but for wolf may not be. You'll want to get acquainted with your local butcher also, but you will see this by doing a bit of research into paleo and dogs.
I've seen some of man's wolves trained into a rescue capacity and those that are running with paleo people are usually very fit like the people themselves. U'm no vet, I'm just saying they are vigorous and strong like their kind should be.
Look up how to feed a dog a raw diet, or premium foods in which grains are a very limited ingredient. Dogs are omnivores and can process meats, fruits, veggies, and to some extent dairy and grain - but not a lot of the last two.
I recently switched my German shepherd/golden retriever cross to a grain-free diet. It hasn't been that long since she's started the new diet, so I really can't comment on what good it's done thus far, but I can tell you that she absolutely loves the food!
It is so common to find allergies in golden retrievers. My dog's veterinary dermatologist said that switching to a grain-free food can help. He also suggested staying away from poultry, beef and lamb, as these can trigger problems, too. So, my girl is now eating Taste of the Wild's Smoked Salmon.
I'm sorry I can't comment further on how things have changed since switching her to the new food, but I hope to be able to give a good report soon.
Good luck with your decision.
Also canines in the wild eat a lot of organ meat. The mistake people make when trying to add meat to their diets is exclusively muscle meat. But a canine will gut its prey, prizing and eating the guts. So many modern paleos will set their wolves to eating organ meat at least once a week. Of course it need not be raw, unless you knew precisely where that meat came from, pan-fried in olive oil or just plain roasted or even boiled is fine, to kill the bacteria presented by the meat packing and storing process.
Hi. first of all may i strongly urge you to take your dog off IAMs proactive. yave you ever read the ingredients in that food. it is complete crap! please, folks, read the ingredients of what you are feeding this dog that is giving it's life to guide you around. there are loads of much better foods out there and, you can go here to read about loads of them; www.chewy.comjust a generalization here but, if you can buy it at a grocery store, chances are, it's a really low end dog food. it just happens that i recently was researching IAMs proactive for a friend so i am very familiar with the horrible ingredients that are in it. for example, MSG! now, who wans to feed their dog MSG every single day. and, that is just the start. sorry for the rant but, research research research.
I don't know much about giving a dog a grain free diet, except that my second and third dogs have been fed dry food that contained brown rice as it's main carb sauce. The one thing I do know is tha Iams and the offshoot ucanuba or however it's spelt, are full of adatives the dogs really don't need, so try and look for a higher quality food often from a much smaller company with ingredients for a diet created by a vet. It's what I've done for years, and my dogs are generally healthier for it.
The only other thing to be careful of, is that you've recently gone from home back to school, before that recently from Guide dog school to home. this means the dogs water sourse has changed several times, every time this happens it can affect the dog's stomach for a time making stool softer. I'm just suggesting an alternative reason for why this might happen temporarily.
I actually am switching from a no Grain diet to a cheaper food with Grain. The grain foods my vet said are not exactly bad but it depends what they put in some that make it not healthy for the dog. I will say speaking from experience that grain free can get very pricy. I know people say you shouldn't have guides if can't afford the high quality foods but circumstances change.
I decided to switch Kip's food to a pricier, but grain free food. I did the research on Iams and commercial dog food, and saw how shitty it really is. I should be receiving a bag of Acana within the next few days here.
I never thought to research the quality of different dog foods before. I've never had any kind of pet, so this is a whole new world for me. I'm glad I have more knowledge about it under my belt for Kip's future, and future guide dogs of mine.
I have some major advice on this issue. My dogs anal glands are kind of expressing themselves in very awkward social situations. It is an extreme problem so I am working with a vet to fix it. For one, when you look at a food for a dog with anal issues, or any dog for that matter, the first five ingredients should be meats, vegitables, fruits, or other natural things like that. I really reccomend wellness white fish and sweet potato. One of the major problems when the anal glands have this problem is that the dog is eating too much grain and other fillers, and not enough fiber. When picking a food you do not want a fatty meat like beef, lamb, or pork. It's just like what meats are more healthy for humans, and white fish is pretty dang healthy. Sweet potatoes are also full of fiber, which I will get into in a moment. The main source of fiber in the form of vegitables are green beans. My vet said you could either use canned or fresh, but a hand full of green beans a day can help with the glands a ton. Babby carrots are great to give them, for the sake of their teeth, and a healthy treat, but that isn't going to give as much fiber as green beans will.
Ok, lots of things. Going grain free is an excellent idea. Now whether you choose to do this with home cooked food, raw diet or one of the excellent dry dog foods that aproximates the benifits of a raw diet will depend on you, your dog and your lifestyle. Baby carrots have a lot of sugar and while they can help firm the stool, and make way better treats than commercially produced grain filled dog biscuits, they aren't the best choice for daily supplementation of your dog's food. Canned pumpkin is great. First of all it is human grade, secondly if you get organic then it will be free of harmful chemicals. I get that you don't want things from a can, but we are comparing apples and oranges. Fresh vs. canned is a good arguement, but not when the carrots have way more sugar in them, which can lead to problems with yeast and other biologically based build ups in the digestive tract. Good organic canned pumpkin, with nothing else added to it is not really different from buying some pie quality pumpkins and baking and pureeing them yourself, but that is very time consuming. If you are using a commercially produced dry food instead of going raw or preparing a home cooked diet your self, then worrying about canned pumpkin being canned really is a moot point. Organic yogurt, the plane of course, is excellent for aiding in aleviating stomach upsets. I would suggest the following. Baby carrotts as treats for good off leash recall and for other just because treat times, as they help clean teeth, which is important if you are feeding anything but a raw diet. Canned pumpkin in small amounts added to dry kibble, and in large portions when your dog is actively struggling with diareah. Plane yogurt utalized the same as the pumpkin, in small supplementary doses with the dry food, but in large portions with pumpkin during times of digestive upset. Think of the pumpkin yogurt mixture as the rice and beef mixture they usually recommend during diareah troubles. You discontinue the food altogether, then you feed 1 to 3 cups of the pumpkin yogurt mixture to your dog 2 to 4 times a day until their stool firms, then add in 1/4 cup of kibble, replacing an equal amount of the pumpkin yogurt mixture with it, at every meal until your dog is back on their normal food, with only 1/4 cup of the pumpkin yogurt mixture given at each meal. The preportions aren't an exact science, but trying about 50 50 pumpkin to yogurt is a good place to start. You can take the large 28 oz can of organic pumpkin and mix it with 1 of the 32 oz plane organic yogurts and start with that and adjust if desired. You can premix it and keep it in a small mixing bowl in the fridge and dole out the 1/4 cup supplement with each kibble meal. Alternatively, some dogs who don't tollerate corn and other grains well can do well on a food made with oatmeal which soothes the digestive tract and has many health benifits. Oatmeal may be substituted for pumpkin in this suggested regemin, depending on what works best for your dog. Or, if you want to use the more recently recommended rice and ground beef mixture when your dog is sick, you can use oatmeal instead of rice, and keep the cooked ground beef, and use probiotic capsils designed for humans opened up and mixed in with the oatmeal beef if you can't get organic plane yogurt. Oatmeal can also be a good basis for a home cooked diet, where oatmeal is made with water, or chicken stock or broth and meat and eggs are added to this. I do not however recommend jumping into either a home cooked or a raw diet without a lot of research and a good mentor to help you, as both can be a bit complicated while you are getting used to them. I feed my dog raw using freeze dried meat, pieces of cooked meat, baby carrots and small pieces of raw milk cheese as treats. Using pumpkin and yogurt as a stomach resting diet during times of diareah, and with raw meat being given as normal fair, including liver, kidney, turkey necks, chicken quarters, pancrius, when I can get it, raw eggs including shells, chicken backs, pork neck bones and other human grade muscle meats and organ meats. My husband's service dog and my mother's guide dog eat an oatmeal and chicken based food with a nice short natural ingrediants list and they both also use the pumpkin yogurt diet and supplementation, and my mom's dog does the baby carrots, while my Husband's dog does the freeze dried meat treats. Whether you go grain free or not, i seriously recommend looking at the ingrediants list of your current food in detail. I'd be happy to help you with this if you are interested. Basically you want the following. A. grain is either not contained in the food at all, or it is at least 2 or 3 ingrediants down in the list. B. there are absolutely no ingrediants labeled as "animal fat" or "Animal meal" or "Animal biproduct" as this can include anything from 4D livestock, dead, diseased, dying and disabled, euthanized pets and zoo animals, unsafe parts of animals processed for human consumption and you have no way of avoiding pork specifically, or fish, or poultry or any particular meat that your dog might have a sensativity to. C. The word biproducts doesn't appear anywhere on the label, even if the type of meat is specified. D. While some fruits and vegetables can contain good nutriants for dogs, having a food that has blueberries, carrots, parsnips, tomatoes, beets, spinach, potatos, and a dozen other things is not a good idea. The more different ingrediants makes it very difficult to insure that there isn't something in there that your dog is sensative to. Simple fairly short ingrediants lists are best. E. No artificial colors or flavors. Your dog doesn't care what their food looks like and the unneccessary and harmful chemicals in fake colors are just not good for dogs. F. If the food does contain grains, oatmeal is preferable, followed by rice, and corn and wheat are the worst. Common grain alternatives include sweet potato, which is great, pumpkin which is great, and regular potatos are good but not great. Oh, and before someone starts freaking about the bones in a raw diet, let me just explain. Cooked ones are very dangerous as they can splinter and hurt or even kill a dog if they cut up the stomach or intestinal tract. However, dogs in the wild eat raw bones all of the time, with no detrement. A dog's teeth are designed to grind up raw bones which are not able to splinter, as they are softer and more malliable then cooked bones, and their stomach acid is stronger and different from ours and they can easily digest the bone to obtain glucosamine, calcium, vitamin D, and other minerals and nutriants. Trust me, I've seen the bones crunched, safely fed my dog raw for years, and seen the stool that results. It's awesome. Yes, I just described dog poop as awesome. With no fillers or junk the dog can't use and doesn't need, raw fed dog poop is tiny, dry hard things that look like rabbit terds. I've had people marvle that my dog produced something resembling the output of a chiwahwah, when she is a 70 lb german shepherd and consumes around 2 to 4 lb of raw food a day. However, raw feeding, just like prong collars, high drive high energy breeds as pets, and owner training, are all things that I don't recommend lightly and don't recommend at all unless the person is comitted to doing a heck of a lot of research. Now, Here's a caviat. As I understand it GEB has a 2 year probationary period before you can own your dog. Most schools aren't familiar with raw feeding and their response if you ask their advice will be somewhere in the range of forbidding you to do it and threatening to take your dog away. You have to remember that commercial dog food companies pay for huge portions of vetrinary school budgets, including backing the publishing of veterinary text books, giving grants for research and scholarships and providing free food to many shelters, vet clinics and service dog schools. Once you own your dog, and it becomes...
Once you own your dog, and it becomes only your business what you do with your dog, feel free to explore a raw diet, but for now I suggest you find a human grade grain free high quality dry food. I also highly highly recommend not mentioning it to the puppy raisers if and when you switch your dog to raw, as they are certain to freak out. Honestly, while they are probably wonderful people, and while they might have good insights into behaviors related to your dog's up-bringing, your first place for advice should be the vet for health matters, your school for training matters, or good internet resources and reliable in person resources for things which are lidgitimate but outside the scope of most vets or your school, such as raw feeding. While I do believe that raw is best, a high quality food as described above will still be tens of times better than most commercial dog food diets, so it's a great step to take. I recommend Enova Evo for a grain free dry human grade kibble. Lastly, it's not fun, but learning from an experienced groomer or vet how to express the anal glands yourself can be very cost effective if your dog continues to have problems with them even after taking dietary steps to remedy the situation. Good luck, and feel free to contact me via private message if you have specific questions.
I wholeheartedly agree with the 2 posts above me. i also have fed the raw food diet and she is so right when she says the dog poops are great! i, however, choose not to go this way for my current dog as, i travel quite a bit and the food would be very difficult to obtain. i currently live in an apartment and do not have the room for an extra freezer for meat nor do i have a balcony or similar area to feed. and, i will admit it, i like the convenience of feeding out of a bag. i can not say enough about coconut oil! it has literally saved me from having to return my dog due to digestive issues. just 1 teaspoon a day keeps her stool firm and it is a strong probiotic as well. wonderful for people i might add, i use it myself. look up benefits of coconut oil and you will see what i am getting at.
To the last poster. Just some tips that might help. In an apartment you can feed in a crate with a hard plastic bottom, like a wire crate with the removable pan bottom and just wipe that down with a super dilute bleach solution every day or 2, and wash with stronger stuff once every week or so. If you have a lanolium floor in your kitchen, you can just feed your dog there, on leash or in a small corner of it and use a paper towel with that super dilute bleach solution to sanatize the floor where they ate. You can just keep some of this solution around, premixed, spray the floor then wipe up with a paper towel, you can even use your foot to move the paper towel if you're freakish like me and can hold it like that, to keep from getting on your hands and knees to clean your floor once or twice a day. If you have 1 a steam mop is good for sanatizing the section of floor once a week as well. You can also feed in the bath tub when traveling, then wrinse out the bath tub with super hot water and a splash of rubbing alcohol once your dog is done. If you freeze a bag of chicken quarters solid, that has about 10 in there, you can just store it in a water tight container in your room or your sighted friend's car, or wherever when you are traveling and if you feed 2 chicken quarters a day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, they will thaw at such a rate that the center stays safe and frozen until you are ready to use it, and your dog gets a chicken quarter that is still chilled, below room temperature with no or only small parts that are still a bit icey, works great for trips of 2 or 3 days. If you are flying, then yeah, that can be tough, although you can ship a small stirophome cooler ahead of you, and or, since you are feeding human grade, many hotels will pick up a bag of groceries for you for a very small fee. It totally depends though on how tight your travel schedule is, how much money you have and how many other responsibilities. I.E. if you are traveling with multiple service dogs, or with kids, etc, you might not have the time or energy to fuss with raw while traveling. Just wanted to point out for other zoners who might visit this board that traveling while doing a raw diet can totally be done. Interesting about the coconut oil. I know it's great benifits for human beings, as that and olive oil are the 2 omega 9 oils that are most helpful, healthy and easiest to obtain and I know that omega 3s are good for us and for dogs, but I hadn't thought about coconut oil in relation to dogs. I'll have to do some research on that. Thanks. Just curious, which high quality commercial food did you decide on for your current guide? I still think Enova Evo is one of the best, but the fact that california naturals and enova evo were baught out by proctor and gambell is very concerning. I suggest to people that they check the ingrediants of every 3rd or 4th bag they buy, to make sure they haven't changed any of the ingrediants and compermised the quality. HTH
Back in September, I switched my dog to Acana Pacifica. Here is the ingredients list from chewy.com:
Boneless salmon, salmon meal, herring meal, whitefish meal*, green peas, red lentils, whole potato, boneless herring, boneless flounder, herring oil, field beans, canola oil, sun-cured alfalfa, pea fibre, natural fish flavour, whole apples, whole pears, sweet potato, pumpkin, butternut squash, parsnips, carrots, spinach greens, cranberries, blueberries, kelp, chicory root, juniper berries, angelica root, marigold flowers, sweet fennel, peppermint leaf, lavender, rosemary, vitamin A supplement, vitamin D3 supplement, vitamin E supplement, niacin, riboflavin, folic acid, biotin, vitamin B12 supplement, zinc proteinate, iron proteinate, manganese proteinate, copper proteinate, selenium yeast, dried Enterococcus faecium fermentation product
* ACANA’s whitefish meal contains wild-caught flounder, halibut and Alaskan cod.
I know this contains some of the no-nos given in a post above (i.e. spinach, blueberries, and parsnips), but this food seems to be the solution to my problem. He does exceptionally well on this food, having no anal gland issues and no ear infections.
Unfortunately, the damn company had a kitchen fire, so I could not obtain my recipe for a few months. I had never thought of anything like this happening, so I went through a couple different dog food changes. This resulted in a couple ear infections and resumed the anal gland issues. My back up food wound up being Canidae's PureSea recipe until I could get my hands on Acana Pacifica again, which fortunately was the beginning of this month. It stinks to high heaven, obviously because it smells strongly of fish, but Kip does wonderfully on this food. If any factory mishaps occur in the future, I'll be sure to give him Innova or EVO's herring and salmon recipes. They cost around the same any way, so it wouldn't be a hassle.
I don't think I will do anything with a raw food diet. Living in a college dorm would not be the most ideal situation for that. Also, I have read that this could put people he interacts with at risk of e. coli or salmonella.
If I find that the anal gland issues do continue, I will ask my vet to teach me how to do it. It only costs $10.5, but that's a higher price than I'd pay doing it for myself.
Thanks for the suggestions and insight.
I'm glad this food is working well for you. None of those vegie ingrediants is "bad" I just wouldn't recommend it to someone starting out with natural foods, because if it didn't work for there dog, there'd be no telling which ingrediants might have caused the problem. However your dog sounds like their only serious sensativity is to grain, since this worked so well. So, if this works for your dog, the more power to you. It probably does stink, *smile* I had my dog on california natural herring and sweet potato and it smelled aweful, but worked very well for my dog, so was worth it, but it always smelled a bit like a seafood restaurant in my kitchen, and not in the good way. As to feeding raw in a college dorm, erm, yeah, I'm all about raw, but not in a college dorm, that would be extremely difficult to do. I mean it was enough of a hastle to keep organic yogurt in my mini fridge and use our crappy dorm kitchen to make brown rice and ground beef for my dog when she wasn't feeling well, long before I knew about pumpkin and oatmeal, so I can't even imagine feeding raw in a dorm. As to the not being safe to have a raw fed dog around people, that is bull put out by the dog food companies. You see, this started with Delta society and other therapy dog organizations who are primarily sponcered by dog food companies, Delta society's vests even had a dog food company logo on them for a while, might still have that, I'd have to check to be sure I'm accurate to make sure they are still there, but they used to be. To prove how this is fueled by their anti raw adgenda, the Delta society guide lines state that if a dog is intentionally fed a raw egg or a raw meat product it must not visit people for therapy work for 6 weeks, but the regulations state that if a dog accidentally eats something dead or catches and kills a small animal that if the vet clears the dog it can work with people any time after the vet has cleared it. This is of course moronic as a raw chicken breast meant for human consumption is far safer than a nasty dead birrd that's been squashed on the road or a nasty rotting fish on the beach. I know many therapy dog handlers whose dogs eat raw and work in hospitals and nursing homes. You see, it's on the honor system, and so they just do their own thing with regards feeding their dogs and continue to do their good works with therapy dogs. My raw fed dog has been in hospitals, nurcery schools, daycare centers and so on. There have been absolutely no studies showing that feeding dogs raw effects their over all cleanlyness. I mean, yes if you give a bloody dripping piece of meat to a newfoundland with tons of fur on their face and neck, and they are caked with yuck, you need to wash their fur, but for the average dog, like a GSD or a lab, even a golden or a coated sheperd, this isn't an issue. Many people managed to get them selves sick with contaminated commercial dog food, because they treated it like cereal, which it is not. I handle raw meat with live bacteria on it every day, and I wash my hands for at least 60 seconds with soap and warm water and antibacterial soap when I'm handling something especially gross. But most commercial dog food purchasers don't wash their hands after handling the dog food, so this made some people quite sick. Proper handling of either product won't make anyone sick, dogs or humans. The main reason that food was recalled when bacteria was involved was to prevent humans from becoming sick, as most dogs could eat contaminated food with no problems, but if a human died, most likely a small child eating dog food, as toddlers have been known to do, or an elderly dog owner or one with an otherwise compermised immune system, then the dog food company would be finished, lawsuit time. So they pulled the food. Remember, dogs in the wild eat meat that's been rotting and out in the sun for days without getting sick. Now, would I ever feed that sort of meat to my dog? No, but I know if they can handle that, then our tame by comparison human grade raw meat is down right staral by comparison. I'm not trying to talk you or anyone else into feeding raw,now or in the future. I just wanted to dispell that raw fed dogs aren't safe to have around some people myth, because it's been cropping up a lot lately, even in popular magazines, which is really frustrating.
That diet is pretty paleo: mainly meat and veggies. What I had not known until recently was the wolves eat veggies also, when they can get it, so sounds like a good strategy. Grain is often trouble for people, so, interesting to learn it is trouble for the wolves also.