[charles h]

Afternoon,

We are having some quite serious problems with our dog and runny stool on a raw food diet. To be honest we moved to a raw food diet because all other diets she was so bad we couldn’t leave her for more than an hour. We are working with the idea of 10% bone 10% organ 80% meat… However we are finding that we need to give bone with nearly every meal which is pushing the bone % up much higher than I’m happy with..

Do you think this is a problem? She sometimes strains to poo but I believe this is better than having diarrhoea which is so bad she sometimes goes in the house as she cannot wait… If I feed anything ‘mushy’ such as mince or a pre-made raw food diet she has sickness and diarrhoea within days of eating… So its basically chicken with another meat so she gets bone and something else, the problem is when she stops eating the chicken and only the other meat then we know she will have diarrhoea again…

Any advice would be appreciated,

Charles

[crazy4cats]

Hi Charles-
It’s too bad you are having such a hard time finding food that works for your dog. Have you taken her to the vet? Has she had any stool or blood tests done? Check out this website for some very valuable information: http://www.dogaware.com/health/digestive.html. Good luck!

[charles h]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply..

Yeah when she was first ill (at about 8 weeks) we took her to an animal hospital and she was tested for everything (except stool actually only blood). This is when we went through lots of different foods and digestive enzymes and all sorts to try and settle her stomach.

Since then we moved to raw food and she was great at first (like first month) but has slowly deteriorated (possibly since introducing more meat types on a monthly basis). She has been to the vets two or three times in the last couple of months each time given a set of injections and told to starve for 24 hours then start feeding again…

I will definitely read that link. We did feed boiled chicken and rice but now we find that just plain chicken with bone and no skin is actually better, she has much harder stool this way…

I’m thinking we simply take her diet right back to chicken only and almost restart the introduction to raw food again… Keeping in mind that when she first started this diet she was like a different dog…

However if it continues I guess we need to convince our vet to take diagnosis further as simple injections are not helping just masking over the problem..

My concern is that she is 9 months now and with this continuous issue and keep feeding her plain food to try and settle her stomach is she missing vital nutrients that she needs to grow and develop…

Charles

[crazy4cats]

Yes, I think you are right to be concerned about her getting her vital nutrients while she is growing. I’d definitely take in a stool sample as well. My dogs started out with intermittent runny stools and diarrhea as well. It turns out they had a bad case of Giardia and Coccidia. There are also different types of worms that can cause it as well. Have you dewormed her? I’m not sure if that is the issue, but I’d try to rule it out! The link I sent you has a lot of good ideas that helped me through my dogs’ ordeals.

[DogFoodie]

Hi Charles,

What are the injections she’s been given and what was the diagnosis behind the injection?

How is her weight? Has she been gaining weight appropriately?

[charles h]

Hey,

Thanks again for the replies…

She did have her monthly worming tablets about a week and a half ago.

The injections she had was one for antibiotics, one for Anti-inflammatory (as she was passing blood due to swollen intestines) and one for anti-diarrhea. I mean they work to a point as in she is not passing blood, she didn’t have diarrhea anymore, etc.

She does seem to be gaining weight well and when she is not ill I do tend to feed her a slightly higher % of her adult body weight to help her gain. We had her weighed about 2 months ago and she was 22Kg, six weeks later she was 27Kg so 5Kg in six weeks seemed like good weight gain to me. She has had two bad weeks so she might have lost some weight again now…

However she was fed with about 300 grams of plain raw chicken last night with some bone. She has not been sick or had any diarrhea, so no stool sample taken however I’m prepared with my little pots to collect it if she has another bad turn.

Moving forward I’m going to purchase these two items from amazon:

As well as keeping her on a chicken only diet with some fish oil to keep up nutrient levels. After four weeks of this I will judge if I believe she is better and ready for another meat to be added to her diet.. I’m also removing the Chicken skin to try and reduce fat levels as I know they can be hard to digest and cause loose stools…

What does everyone think of my plan 🙂

Charles

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