[Rich H]

We have 2 King Charles cavalier spaniels that are about 6 months old. About 2-3 weeks ago they started having soft stools with mucus. We took them both right to the vet. They did physical, fecal and parvo tests. All came back negative so they gave us medicine to help with their stomachs and gave us hill science diet wet food. One of them started to get better though he still has soft stools but the other started having liquid diharrea and stop eating. We took her to the vet again and they said she was dehydrated and put her on iv with med. they did blood test and another fecal but again negative. she came home next day and was better. But both still have soft stools. We are going to try changing their food to see if that helps. We were giving them acana free range poultry.

We are looking at the following and want to get some thoughts or other recommendations:

i was looking for a good limited ingredient or sensitive stomach dry food that is made in the usa only and doesn’t include chicken. Was looking at duck, rabbit or salmon. I don’t have them in any particular order as it was just the order I found them. They are all 4 star or up.

https://www.chewy.com/taste-wild-pacific-stream-puppy/dp/34840

https://www.chewy.com/wellness-simple-limited-ingredient/dp/36859

https://www.chewy.com/canidae-grain-free-pure-elements/dp/55148

https://www.chewy.com/castor-pollux-natural-ultramix-grain/dp/118171

https://www.chewy.com/nutrisca-grain-free-salmon-chickpea/dp/35033

https://www.chewy.com/natures-variety-instinct-grain-free/dp/33462

[anonymous]

Nutrisca is my favorite. Add water to the kibble. Do not leave food down. Feed 2 X per day (or 3 small meals), measured amounts add water to the kibble or presoak overnight. Use the kibble as a base, add a bite of real food, a spoonful of scrambled egg (no milk) or chopped cooked chicken, lean meat.

Ps: Make sure they are getting enough exercise, frequent bathroom breaks. Walk for at least 1 hour a day, time divided up/leisurely is okay.
If they are being crated/caged all day, you may want to reevaluate, it can be stressful.
Food is only a small part of it…
But, you may want to go along with the recommended prescription food, at least till the pups are stable.

[anonymous]

How about Fromm? Not as high fiber as some of the brands you mentioned.

[Rich H]

I do like the castor one but it is adult so it sure if that is an issue. The others are either puppy or all life stages, so want to make sure get that right too outside of not having chicken in it. I looked at Fromm but didn’t see one that didn’t have chicken in it.

I am not attached to any brand I am more worried about getting the best food that fits my requirements (no chicken, limited ingredients/sensitive stomach, made in USA, age appropriate and no major recalls), that isn’t too expensive and can be purchased relatively easy (local store, amazon/chewy or petco/petsmart).

They seem fine otherwise. They play and fight and go in our yard. They are crated for their naps and bedtime.

[anonymous]

At 6 months they can go to adult/all life stages food. My dogs do well on Nutrisca Salmon and Chickpea as a base, however, it is on the high side for fiber…….
How about boiled rice and hamburger mixed in? That is usually what the vets recommend.

[anonymous]

https://www.mspca.org/angell_services/choosing-the-right-diet-for-your-pet/
excerpt below:
Grain free diets have become all the rage in the last few years. I suspect this has stemmed from greater recognition of gluten sensitivity in humans. Most pet food companies have jumped on the band wagon following the marketing success of grain free human diets. The truth of the matter is that there are no dog or cat studies showing a health benefit to grain free foods. A myth has been perpetuated that grains are unhealthy. In fact, whole grains contribute vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids and are highly digestible by dogs and cats. Allergies to grains are actually very rare, and only the Irish Setter breed has been demonstrated to have a gluten sensitivity. Many grain free diets substitute potatoes and tapioca, which have less protein, more sugar, and less fiber. And typically these come at a higher cost.

[Rich H]

We were adding pumpkin and honest kitchen protein topper to the previous food. Not sure if we plan to do that with what we choose now.

The grain free part is least important to me compared to the no chicken and limited ingredients/sensitive stomach

[anonymous]

I have never added pumpkin anything to anything. And I stay away from honest kitchen anything. Just doesn’t make any sense to me. Most supplements are scams (in my opinion).

[Rich H]

Are any of the others I listed any good? Are there other options I should be looking at?

[anonymous]

It depends on the dog, they are all good. My neighbor’s dog does well on Zignature.
Whatever you decide to try, get a small bag first and see how it goes.

[CockalierMom]

Hi Rich,

I have a different viewpoint and experience from anon101. Based on the experiences that I have had, your initial instinct of going with a limited ingredient diet would be the best to start. The Acana you were feeding had lentils, beans, chickpeas and peas. Any one of those ingredients are a candidate to cause poo issues and I would limit as many of those ingredients as possible. My girl that had problems with soft and runny poos when she was a puppy now does fine as long as I stay away from grains and a limited amount of chickpeas–green peas do not bother her. She eats Wellness Simple Turkey or Salmon, and I sometimes add a little Wellness Complete Grain Free, with Honest Kitchen Preference and my own cooked meat as a topper. My other girl that had serious food issues eats mostly Honest Kitchen and a few Wellness kibbles. As you and I both know, Honest Kitchen is not a supplement or a scam.

Although Natural Balance LID diets are lower protein, they truly are limited ingredients with only one protein and one carb source. I use to feed their Kangaroo and Potato formula before it was discontinued. My personal opinion though is to try Wellness Simple first.

[Susan]

Hi, Fromm has too many ingredients, stick with kibbles that have no more then 5-ingredients & have 1 single protein, I have a dog with IBD & the only kibble that settled Patches IBD was “Taste Of The Wild” Sierra Mountain, Roasted Lamb & Pacific Stream Smoked Salmon both formula’s have limited ingredients & only have 1 protein, TOTW uses Purified water, Patch loves the TOTW Sierra Mountain Roasted Lamb he went off the Smoked Salmon plus it’s not a good idea to feed a fish kibble for too long, so now I rotate between TOTW Roasted Lamb & “Canidae Pure” Wild Boar…. Canidae Pure is grain free has limited ingredients comes in wet & dry & the kibble size is nice & small so easy to digest..
Keep us up dated what worked for your fur babies… then once they’re doing really well start to rotate with another brand with a different protein, rotating helps strengthen the stomach/bowel & they aren’t eating the same food 24/7….
http://www.canidae.com/dog-food/products

[Susan]

DO NOT give any Hamburger mince or boiled rice this is sooo OLD school now, people that have been thru this problem with their fur babies would have seen vet specialist & know not to use any fatty mince meats like hamburger mince, boiled rice can irritate the bowel, plus rice ferments in the stomach….Boiled potato or boiled sweet potato & a very lean white meat is now used when a dog becomes ill with stomach & bowel problems….

[Rich H]

All the ones I picked were either limited ingredients or sensitive stomach. I was looking at duck,
Rabbit or salmon as the main ingredient since was thinking chicken could be the problem as I looked it up that was mentioned.

Why shouldn’t you keep giving them fish as the main protein? I prefer not to have to switch food often.

Does anyone have experience with the castor and Pollux as that one looks nice but was adult and that worried me a bit. The canidea was the same.

My wife had found the wellness simple and liked the reviews about it. It is only 4 star but people were saying it helped with soft stools.

When we first were choosing the dog the local pet store suggested the taste of the wild and it has good reviews on chewy. But the puppy is only 4 star.

The nutrisca is rated 5 star on here so it looked interesting.

I don’t mind 4 star if it is the right one for my dogs.

[pitlove]

Hi Rich-

Star ratings on here don’t indicate how your dog will do on a food. It is important to look for a puppy food that has high digestibility. Wellness is certainly a good company, but NutriSource is usually the food I recommend for situations like this. That or Purina Pro Plan, due to both having similar high digestability.

When choosing a food I prefer to use WSAVA’s guidelines for choosing a food. Good looking ingredients alone don’t automatically mean “quality”.

https://www.wsava.org/sites/default/files/Recommendations%20on%20Selecting%20Pet%20Foods.pdf

[Susan]

Hi Rich, click on this link, Clean Label Project,
http://www.cleanlabelproject.org/product-ratings/pet-food/ scroll down & read the kibbles & wet foods that had the most toxic chemicals, arsenic, lead & cadmium, most were pet foods that had fish as the main protein, last yea I started feeding Patch the “Holistic Select” Adult/Puppy, Salmon, Anchovy & Sardines made by Well Pet who make’s Wellness another kibble Patch did well on then went down hill after 2-3months, his stomach & bowel seems to know when a kibble isn’t right & something is wrong, now I know why after reading the Clean Label Project… all last year Patch was doing really well eating TOTW Roasted Lamb + different cooked foods that I add to his diet for dinner, then Spring come around, cause Patch suffers with Seasonal Environment Allergies, I start to feed a fish based kibble thru the Spring & Summer months the year before I feed an Australian made kibble “Meals For Mutts” but this year I started to feed the Holistic Select G/F fish kibble instead the man at the pet shop recommended the Holistic Select he feeds it to his 2 Staffys that also have allergies then after 2-3 months Patch went down hill after eating the Holistic Select, he stopped eating it, he was doing sloppy cow pattie poos, up all hours of the night pooing, bad wind pain, whinging, I saw his vet, she put him back on the Metronidazole & I put him back on his TOTW Lamb kibble, his poo’s firmed up within 2 days.. then 1 month ago I see Holistic Select kibble on the Clean Label Project it’s 10th, contains the highest amount of harmful environment and industrial contaminants & toxins.. I nilly died & Holistic Select is a 5 star kibble on the DFA….
This is why over time it’s best to find a couple of different brands of pet food with a different protein that agree with your dogs & you rotate between the 2 or 3 brands so if 1 brand isn’t being made any more or has something wrong like toxins or lacking vitamins, not enough omega 3 etc your dogs are not on the one food long enough, eating the same food 24/7 for years & years & suffering long term health problems…..

What kibble works for one dog may not work for another dog, if your dogs were doing sloppy poo’s with jelly mucus on them it’s normally food intolerances, or the protein may be too high, after doing a food elimination diet with my boy, it was chicken, corn, corn gluten meal, barley, boiled rice he can not eat, his IBD vet specialist said when I’m looking for any kibbles or wet tin foods make sure it has 1 single protein with limited ingredients so there’s less chance he will react to an ingredient, she said if after 9-12 months he’s doing really well on the same kibble, its best to introduce new foods into his diet, sometimes a dog will start to react to an ingredient in the food you’ve been feeding for years, so I rotate kibbles now & I add different foods to his diet for dinner or as treats but I didn’t do all this straight away it has taken over 3-4 yrs to get to this point where Patch can eat anything now as long as it’s not any foods he’s sensitive too…also sometimes a 5 star food won’t be the best food for your dog, if it’s a 3 stars food & agrees with your dog & the ingredients all look good then that’s OK, Dog Food Advisor gives less stars sometimes cause the protein is under 25%, there’s nothing wrong with the kibble, but the lower the protein the more carbohydrates that kibble will have….

[anonymous]

Check with your vet, but I might want to get the stools firmed up a bit before making a food change, then gradually introduce the new food over a few days as the article suggests.
http://cvsecvet.com/Specialties/MedicalResource/53 Excerpt below
Feeding A Bland Diet
 DIET: When offering food, please offer small meatballs of a bland diet if tolerated.  There are various bland prescription diets such as Hill’s I/D or Royal Canin GI Low Fat you may try.  Please ask for a written prescription to have them filled.  A home cooked bland diet is any combination of the below carbohydrate and protein source, and should be in small frequent meals 3-4 times daily for 3-5 days.  If this is tolerated and stool becomes formed, then switch to twice daily feedings and then slowly transition back to normal diet over the following 3-5 days by mixing the two.
 1) A mixture of a carbohydrate from the following list and a protein from the following list:
Carbohydrate                  Proteins
Boiled white rice             Boiled drained lean hamburger
Boiled potatoes               Low fat cottage cheese
Boiled plain pasta           Boiled chicken (no bones or skin)
2) Feeding Instructions: Mix one carbohydrate with one protein at a ratio of 3/4 carbohydrates and 1/4 proteins.  Feed approximately one cup of cooked carbohydrate and four ounces of protein per 20 pounds of body weight daily. 
 

[HoundMusic]

DO NOT give any Hamburger mince or boiled rice this is sooo OLD school now, people that have been thru this problem with their fur babies would have seen vet specialist & know not to use any fatty mince meats like hamburger mince, boiled rice can irritate the bowel, plus rice ferments in the stomach….Boiled potato or boiled sweet potato & a very lean white meat is now used when a dog becomes ill with stomach & bowel problems…. “

I am sorry, but this is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard.

Rice does not ferment in the stomach. White rice is a very digestible form of fiber that tends to be a constipating agent as it soaks up excess moisture in the digestive tract.
Hamburger meat, properly prepared, is also an excellent source of nutrients and actually seems to digest easier than boiled chicken in some dogs with digestive issues. Red meats that tend to promote loose stools when raw do have the opposite effect when well cooked.

I’ve weaned about a dozen litters of pups over the years on cooked hamburger meat mixed with baby cereal, and it is generally better tolerated than chicken, but of course, there will be exceptions with individual dogs. IMHO, I find that hamburger and *white* rice is far superior to chicken/rice for dogs who truly have an irritated, sensitive or otherwise delicate digestive system. While that is just personal opinion based on 15+ years of observation, scientific fact tends to concur with me about the rice. It soaks up excess moisture that will only bulk up and soften the stool.

There is nothing “old school” about following methods that work, and that have a basis in scientific fact for doing so. Boiled potatoes of any variety do not have this moisture absorbing effect on the digestive system, and are fairly high on the glycemix index. This seems to me more a case of believing grains are the devil than any nutritional or scientific basis for recommending potatoes.

[Susan]

HoundMusic,

I think it’s ridiculous you feed a sick dog a high fat, low quality mince especially when the dog is vomiting & has diarrhea, say that dog has Pancreatitis??..
When was the last time you went to see a vet specialist for a dog with Intestinal problems IBS, IBD, Pancreatitis?
Your talking about feeding litter Puppies, introducing puppies to food….Read original post I’m talking about dogs with intestinal STRESS, sloppy poo’s with mucus & then diarrhea, not 4-6 week old puppies being weaned onto food, even then I still wouldn’t feed a sick puppy any cooked hamburger mince or boiled rice…. When you have a SICK dog with Intestinal Stress feeding greasy hamburger mince with boiled rice, rice has pointed corners that can irritate the bowel…..who’s not to say the dogs in this post aren’t sensitive to chicken like my boy is?? one of the poster’s dog became a bit better after being put on a vet diet while the other dog got diarrhea after eating the Hills wet tin food, like my boy did after eating one of the Hills Intestinal health vet diets, this sounds like food sensitivities to me, food sensitivities/intolerance can take anywhere from 1 day up to 6 weeks to react & show symptoms….Food sensitivities normally start when the dog is around 6-8 months old….
I’m pretty sure when Rich took his dogs to see vet, the vet didn’t suggest to go home & feed some boiled hamburger mince with boiled some rice, if he did I would be changing vets & seeing a younger vet who’s up to date with more modern methods, it sounds like Rich vet knew what he/she was doing & did all the proper tests needed to rule out parasites, parvo, infection etc & placed the dogs on a antibiotic (Flagyl/Metronidazole) & a vet diet till Rich works out what to feed them both….if the dogs were placed on a Hydrolyzed diet or a single novel protein, single carb vet diet I do not know, probably not cause one dog had liquid diarrhea after eating the vet diet…..

I’ll stick with what my Specialist vet recommended to feed, 1 lean novel protein + 1 gluten free carb (Sweet Potato or Potato) he suggested to cook white boneless fish or lean turkey breast + boiled sweet potato, if I didn’t want to cook he recommended feeding a vet diet “Royal Canine” Hydrolyzed wet tin food, Sensitivity Control, Duck & Tapioca dry, PV-Potato & Venison, PR-Potato & Rabbit or PD-Potato & Duck & then when dog is stable & doing firm poo’s start an elimination diet & add 1 cooked ingredient for 6 weeks with their vet diet food….these vet diets are 100% balanced with the right vitamins, minerals, enzymes & you’ll get to the root of the problem by doing an elimination diet like I have done in the past with my IBD boy, when you look at the ingredients in these vet diets you will not find any hamburger mince, chicken, rice….. Sweet Potato + 1 lean novel protein seems to work best for Intestinal health problems especially when you think the dog has food intolerances….
You have your opinion & I have mine…..

[Kristi D]

My name is Dr. Kristi Diaz. I am an Independent petPro with pawTree. You may assume I am a veterinarian but I’m actually an anesthesiologist. Nutrition is important to me and I love my dog. I walked away from a career in anesthesiology to stay home with my kids and I got into the pet nutrition field. There are too many unethical pet food companies on the market so when I found pawTree, I knew I had to be a part of it.

I wanted to invite you to try something for free if it sounds good to you. We have a superfood seasoning you sprinkle on dog or cat food. It’s delicious and nutritious and provides taste variety for all breeds with any condition. Here is the coupon code PAW5AEC

And since switching to pawTree food, my dog’s stool is like little tootsie rolls if you know what I mean, … so easy to pick up!

[InkedMarie]

I have a dog who, on kibble, has frequent large, soft stool. I was advised to look at a good with fiber of 3.5% or less. Some I found are:

* Victor Grainfree Ultra Pro
* Victor Nutra Pro
* Dr. Tim’s Pursuit
* Dr. Tim’s Kinesis
* Dr. Tim’s Momentum
* Dr. Tim’s Glacier
* Dr. Tim’s Fusion
* Earthborn Primitive Natural
* SportDog Food Limited Ingredient Grainfree Beef meal

[Mike Sagman]

Kristi,

Thanks for your post. However, please take a moment to review our Commenting Policy which states:

“…if you have a vested interest in a business, please do not use this website as a means to distribute free samples or coupons, offer discounts or conduct product marketing and/or website promotional activities.”

Thanks for your cooperation.

[Rich H]

Thank you for all your help and advice. We ended up going with the canidae all stages lamb kibble. Our vet recommended lamb as the protein and liked what he saw in the ingredients from canidae. He wanted a puppy but was ok with all stages. We just started to slowly transition it in and will see how it goes.

[Author]

Posts