[a c]

Do anyone know the real reason that there must a transition in changing dog food? I know it will cause upset stomach if I don’t transition slowly. But why? Does slow transition also applied to raw food or fresh homemade food?

As human can eat sausage for breakfast, chicken sandwich for lunch, and fish for dinner without any problems. Why switching dog food must be transition slowly?

[Susan]

Hi ac,
Years ago I never had any problems with any of my dogs or cats, I could feed them anything, raw, cooked kibble wet tin etc but after rescuing Patch & finding out he has IBD I was told by a few vets I have to slowly introduce any new foods kibbles etc to him so his gut gets use to the new ingredients plus he is sensitive to certain foods so I don’t know if it’s cause the gut/intestinal tract is 70% of our immune system, does this play a role in causing food sensitivities/intolerances??
Vets think Patch was feed poor quality cheap kibble & was sensitive to the ingredients & his stupid owner just kept feeding these ingredients to him or feeding him other cheap kibbles with the same ingredients he was sensitive too for the first 4 yrs of his life causing his IBD….I wish I got him as a pup he probably wouldn’t have IBD now..

I think pet food companies write “Introduce over 7-10 days” on their kibble bags now (they never use too) just incase dogs who have a sensitive stomach/bowel are slowly introduce & don’t get diarrhea, this way the Pet Food Companies are covering their asses…

With a raw diet I went thru a Nutritionist cause of Patches IBD & she said just start Patch on the home made raw diet the next morning like I was feeding his kibble but I didn’t add any bone or organ meat in the beginning, too much organ meat can cause diarrhea & bone causes sloppy poos for Patch, so I suppose we did slowly introduce the raw diet but if you have a healthy dog just start a raw diet the next day when you’d feed kibble but they do get real hungry at first cause their stomach is use to eating kibble that’s higher in carbs, rotate between different brands of kibble & different proteins…..
Now I can pretty much feed Patch anything as long as HE”S NOT sensitive to the foods I’m feeding he’s fine, so I don’t know is it cause I’ve strengthen his immune system? or cause I have worked out the foods he’s sensitive too? or rotating between different kibbles has this helped him?? & now I can feed a few different things?? something has helped him get better & heal his bowel..

[Anne B]

Hi a c,

We have two dogs and they are as different as day and night in every way including eating. One of them can transition from one diet to another in the customary 7-10 day time frame while the other needs 2-3 weeks to change diets completely.
The first dog also eats slower and the second one inhaled his food until I added a stainless steel ball in his food to slow him down. I also found it necessary to add a tbsp of organic pumpkin in his food to firm up his stools.

[a c]

Thank you for the replies. I guess it must be the different mixture of ingredients in the kibbles that make it harder to transition.

Susan, When you rotate the kibbles, do you give one kibble at a time for a month or so and then move to the next kibble or do you mix the kibbles together?

I have tried the raw diet – Stella & Chewy’s, Primal, and The Honest Kitchen. It triggered pancreatitis on one of my dogs. The fat content is too high. I now use homemade cook of ground turkey and fresh vegetables as a topper.

When I tried to transition a new kibble, the stool is always sloppy and frequency almost double. Is this normal? It’s especially hard since I am trying to toilet train my 14 weeks old puppy. He is like a stool manufacturer. 🙂 Organic pumpkin is great. I also see pumpkin for dogs and cats at the pet store. Are those have the same ingredients?

Anne, What is the steel ball that you put it in his food? Two of my dogs also inhaled their food.

[Susan]

Hi ac,
first I find a kibble that I hoped agreed with Patch, I slowly introduce & see how Patch does on the kibble for 1-2 months, but this wasn’t always the way 4 yrs ago I had to keep Patch on a vet diet for 9-12 months to fix his bowel & strengthen his immune system but the vet diet made his skin itch & smell yeasty cause he was sensitive to the chicken, corn, wheat & corn gluten meal….
Food sensitivities/intolerances can take anywhere from 1 day to react up to 6 weeks & react with sloppy poo’s, gas/wind pain, (bad smelly farts) yeasty itchy ears, paws & skin, rubbing bum on carpet, grass or ground, with Patch I know within 1-2 days if he’s sensitive to an ingredient…..
Now I can rotate daily or a couple days a week, some days I’ll give Patch his Taste Of The Wild, Sierra Mountain Roasted lamb for the bigger meals breakfast & dinner then for lunch I give a smaller wet cooked meal, I give him a different kibble or a wet tin food or his cooked rissoles mashed up with sweet potato for his smaller meals 12pm & 8pm…

With your pup just feed him 1 kibble that agrees with him & he does the best on for 6-9 months while he’s growing, don’t try any new kibbles yet unless he starts doing sloppy poo’s, then later on you keep this kibble as his main kibble & his go to kibble if he starts doing sloppy poos/diarrhea, only give new foods as a treat to start with.
Patch does real well on his TOTW Roasted Lamb, so he gets his TOTW feed as main meals at 7am & 5pm then for the smaller meals lunch-12pm & second dinner-8pm he gets 1/3 cup of another kibble that I know agrees with him or wet tin or cooked meal or I change it around & feed his TOTW for the smaller meals it all depends how he’s doing that day if he’s well or has his pancreas/stomach pain then he just eats his TOTW kibble….
After 4-5 yrs I have a pretty good idea what agrees with Patch, I introduced the new Hills D/D Venison & Potato vet diet 3 months ago, we just got the Hills D/D Venison in Australia, it’s the only vet diet that agrees with Patch & he doesn’t itch & get yeasty smelly paws & skin & helps his IBD, it’s high in omega 3, helps with digestion & stool quality when they start doing bigger poo’s helps with his skin, it’s gluten & grain free & I know 100% that the only intact meat protein is venison from new Zealand.. so if he has a IBD flare I now have a vet diet that I can fall back onto but he gets a bit of acid reflux some times I think cause the fat is 16.3% & the higher omega 3 oils, so the TOTW is still his go to kibble that helps his IBD, I just wanted another kibble as well just in case something ever happens, I now have 2 kibbles, I also have his Canidae Pure Wild boar but it’s higher in Kcals per cup over 400 Kcals per cup & Patch seems to get his pancreas or stomach pain when a kibble is over 370 Kcals per cup & if the protein is over 28%, so I only feed the Canidae Pure Wild now for one of his smaller meals some days, his smaller meals lunch & 2nd dinner…..Patch eats 4 meals a day..
I cook fresh pumkin & sweet potato for Patch & freeze 20-30 gram size pieces & I take 1 piece pumkin or sweet potato out & 1 x 1/2 cup size pork rissole & leave in fridge the night before to thaw over night & feed as a small meal, if your pup does well on boiled pumkin then I’d cook some chicken breast cut into small pieces or buy some lean turkey mince make into small 1/2 cup size rissoles balls just add 1 whisked egg, mix & then bake rissoles in oven, cool then freeze & take out when needed & take out some pumkin or sweet potato pieces & make a small snack meal, this is how I started introducing foods to Patch after we found out he has IBD, I’d still feed the kibble that agreed with Patch for breakfast & dinner & the small meal was the new food meal, I was trying to see what agreed with him without upsetting his stomach/bowel, take little baby steps, also try giving new foods as a treat, make sure it’s the same food for the month if he seems to do well then you’ll know he can eat that food, keep a diary….. if your pup does well on pumkin then look for kibbles with sweet potato & potato..
What kibble is he doing well on? read the fat% protein% & fiber% & Kcals per cup & what are the ingredients…try & work out why is he doing really good on this kibble??

[a c]

My 14 weeks puppy has been on Orijen puppy kibbles since I got him when he was 6 weeks old. I have been slowly adding Horizon Amicus puppy kibbles for the past week. I am now using 3/4 Orijen puppy and 1/4 Horizon Amicus puppy kibbles pre soaked in the water overnight. No problems. 4 stools a day. Toosie roll like.

Horizon Amicus puppy dry food is actually one of the puppy dry food recommend by the website. I like to get him off Orijen puppy food if possible because all the things that I read about Orijen lately. It’s also very rich. I have tried to add Freshspot as toper, but it didn’t go so well.

I noticed even with homemade food. You have to add it slowly. I gave them some cooked ground turkey with broccoli. They have soft stool for a few days. I now use it as a toper.

As for my 10 years old, she has pancreatitis history. Our vet put her on Purina One Smartblend Healthy management kibbles. I have been adding a little Natural Receipe wet food and I also pre soaked the kibbles. The ingredients on Purina One is terrible, but what choice do I have? I must keep fat level low so she won’t have another pancreatitis.

[Chris S]

I am trying to transition our dogs from TOW to Acana. Part of the reason is that with the last bag one of our dogs has been having frequent diarrhea and some vomiting. I just found out that there has been some issues with the TOW yellow bags which exact food I am feeding so I really want to get her off quickly but avoiding even worse upsets. Any chance I could just switch and maybe add some pumpkin to help .?

[Susan]

Hi Chris,
my boy suffer’s with IBD, years ago when he was having IBD flares we’d have to see his vet cause he was doing sloppy poo’s, the vet gave him a course of Metronidazole to kill the bad bacteria that was causing the inbalance in gut & bowel, bad bacteria causes the sloppy poos & diarrhea, then vet use to put Patch straight onto a vet diet, with no slow transition, vet diet’s are formulated to heal & fix the Intestinal tract, it has limited ingredients, the fat is around 15%max & protein is around 25%, so maybe look for a limited ingredient kibble with not too high protein & fat with similiar ingreidents they do well on…
“Merrick” limited ingredient formula’s looks really good & has similiar ingredients to the TOTW formula’s, your dogs must of done well on the TOTW ingredients until what has happened with the High Prairie formula… I’m feeding the TOTW Sierra Mountain, Roasted Lamb & my boy isn’t having no problems, my TOTW is coming from their South Carolina facility, TOTW have 5 facilities around America, you might be getting our TOTW High Prairie kibble from one of their Californian plants.. where I think the problem might be…it’s been stressing me out, I’m sticking with the same use by date batches that he’s doing well on..
I also rotate between a few different brands so Patch gets variety… I also feed “Canidae” Pure Wild or Pure Land formula’s, Canidae grow all their vegetables & gets 5 stars on the Consumer Affair site… when you rotate foods you strengthen their gut & the dogs aren’t just eating the same food 24/7…..
One thing about pumkin it’s high in fiber, so if your dogs do well eating high fiber foods then yes the pumkin will help firm poos you only add 1 spoon of pumkin with each meal but if your dog’s don’t do well eating high fiber foods then pumkin can cause real sloppy poos.
Your better off giving them a good dog probiotic like Purina FortiFloria, when they tested 10 dog probiotics only 3 came back with live cultures the FortiFloria probiotic came first with the most active live cultures the other 7 probiotics were a waste of money…

[Chris S]

Thanks Susan, yes she was doing ok on TOW but she is also picky so she had started only eating it if I added some freeze dried salmon for smell 😊. I have never had picky eaters before our two now are pretty picky. They liked Merrick for a while but I think they changed their formula and they started rejecting it.
I bet you are right about the TOW we have. We normally buy locally but our store was out so we bought it from Amazon so no telling wheee it came from.
I did some research and bought the limited ingredients Acana and mixed a little in their food today. Really hope this one will be a keeper.

[a c]

It still so strange that we human can have sausage for breakfast, chicken for lunch, and steak for dinner and don’t have to worry about it, but dog food have to slowly transition.

Do dogs known to be having sensitive stomach? How did dogs in the wild survive?

[anonymous]

“Do dogs known to be having sensitive stomach? How did dogs in the wild survive?”

They didn’t, they didn’t live very long and suffered greatly.
“Dogs are not wolves”
http://skeptvet.com/Blog/?s=dogs+are+not+wolves

As far as transitioning foods, it depends on the dog. I have changed the brand of food cold turkey with no issues. Some dogs may have a loose stool or two.
Once I find a brand of kibble that agrees with the dog, I stick with it as a base and always add a little warm water.

[pitlove]

Hi a c-

I don’t think it’s true at all that humans can always eat variety and not get upset stomach. I can eat variety if its food I’m used to eating, but if I go eat something new my stomach gets upset depending on what it is.

As far as wild canids and wolves, do we really know their stool habits and how their diet affects them? We know they are scavengers, going without food sometimes for a week, eating whatever is available to them. Our domestic pets thankfully have more reliable food sources. Just as wild dogs and wolves have had to adapt to their environment so to have the domestic dog.

[crazy4cats]

I think in some situations we give dogs sensitive stomachs by feeding them the same food meal after meal, day after day and year after year. If we ate the exact same thing for every meal, we would probably have issues with something new as well.

But there are still some foods that are harder on my tummy than others, just like dogs.

Luckily, my dogs are healthy now and I can feed them a variety of types of food and brands with no issue or much transition. Dogs with medical conditions may not ever be able to do this, however. You just have to see what works best for your dogs.

[Author]

Posts