Bland Kibble Options?

[Guest OPointyDog]

Oh look, another post about poop.... (Sorry.)

 

Our new guy, Mika, has had various levels of soft stools since we adopted him in December. His foster mom said that she never noticed a problem, but she also has 5 other dogs and just turns them out in the yard, so I'm not sure she would have noticed. They've always been yellow and soft - sometimes partially formed, but usually more like a milkshake in consistency. He's always had control over the bowel movements - they're just soft.

 

He did have tapeworms when we got him, so we treated those. Negative for other worms in two tests.

 

His foster mom had him on Purina One Lamb & Rice, so we started with that, and after a few weeks, things had not improved, so I tried transitioning him slowly to our other grey's food - Iams Lamb & Rice (red bag). He basically just had more and more diarrhea on that, so we transitioned to a different protein and tried Nutro's Chicken & Brown rice. We occasionally got slightly better, but it was still very soft and yellow. So I figured I'd try a novel protein and grain free, and we went to Nutro Natural Venison & Potato. He'd been on that about a month and was gradually showing a little improvement, though 2/4 poops a day were still runny and always yellow. He had a dental about 3 weeks ago and was on a course of antibiotics, but that didn't seem to affect things one way or another.

 

Then last Tuesday, he woke us up barking and carrying on in his crate. Got him out just in time, and he had explosive diarrhea in the yard. Poor guy. It went on most of the day, and so I took him to the vet. Stool sample was free of parasites, though a smear showed one organism that may have been a giardia cyst. Certainly not a big infection, though. Vitals were all OK, and we put him on Flagyl and Panacur (just in case). No real improvement last week with continued runny stools, so took him in again Saturday, and they did a blood draw to look at his intestinal & pancreatic functions, and also B12 and Foliate levels. Those results are pending.

 

Saturday night I started him on a bland diet - rice and boiled hamburger. Sunday I added some beef baby food, and today started adding a little cottage cheese. The diarrhea stopped right away! Which makes me wonder if it's been his diet all along. This morning, he has the first brown poop I've ever seen!

 

The vet is recommending Purina's hydrolyzed protein food - supposed to be hypoallergenic. It's CRAZY expensive stuff, though. $62 for a 16lb bag. If we end up having to do that, we can, but yipes! I'd also prefer something that was a little more widely available. Anybody have any suggestions for a food for a sensitive system? Clearly he's doing OK on rice and beef. Anybody tried the new Iams Simple & Natural?

 

Thanks for any suggestions.

[Guest undergreysspell]

I use Purina Proplan Sensitive Stomach ( the protein is salmon ) and Gracie has beautiful poops and no gas. She also had runny poop and room clearing gas when I first got her- tried a few different foods till I found this one. I also put a tsp plain greek yogurt and some frozen green beens in her bowl.

[Wonder]

I would try a grainfree like Taste of the Wild or Nature's Domain.

[tbhounds]

If he responded to beef and rice he may do better on a low residue diet. The diet your vet is recommending is a hypoallergenic food-I also find that food to be higher in fat which ='s a no-no for a dog with diarrhea. I'm not sure a hypoallergenic food is needed here-it really would be crazy expensive to feed to a gh too! Personally, I would look for a food low in fat and low or lower in grains. You might want to try Solid Gold WolfKing. It's bison based, 9% fat (low) and gluten free. You can also add some cooked meat to the kibble to make it even lower residue than it is. I find low residue diets usually seem to be the trick (raw is another example)

Good luck-keep us posted. :-)

[Guest WhiteWave]

Maybe try a beef based food? I know Casper does better on beef.

 

4Health (Tractor Supply brand) has a Grain free beef formula which 2 of my dogs are eating now w/o issue. $36.99/30lbs

 

Victor has a lower fat beef and rice formula which runs around $30/40lbs

 

Diamond Naturals has a Beef and rice formula which is also around $30/40lbs.

[Guest OPointyDog]

Thanks for the suggestions! I agree that lower fat and low-residue is probably the way to go, and he seems to do well on beef. I hadn't had much luck finding higher quality beef-based food that doesn't have a lot of filler. I'll check out the suggested types, though, and see if they're locally available! Thank you!

 

We're going to leave him on the bland diet for a couple more days - anybody have any idea how much he should be getting? The directions for a bland diet from our vet said for a 60+ pound dog, they should get food split into 4-6 meals per day with 1-2 cups of a mix of rice, boiled beef and cottage cheese. The problem is that the low end of that is 4 cups a day and the high end is 12 cups!! Mika weighs 71lbs. I've been giving him about 5 cups per day, but I have no idea if that's enough. He's very lab-like in his appetite and will eat ANYTHING at any time.... So it's hard to tell if he's hungry or just being a food hound. He does get treats, including about 1/4 cup of pumpkin frozen in a kong.

[a_daerr]

Purina Pro Plan Sensitive Stomach

Nutro Chicken and Oatmeal for Sensitive Stomachs

Hills I/D

[Guest OPointyDog]

The blood test results came back today - the B12 levels were abnormally low. Everything else was normal. I didn't actually talk to the vet, my partner did, so I haven't gotten to ask any questions about actual numbers or what that means, though apparently he told my partner that it meant there is probably some sort of GI disease that's interfering with B12 absorption. He apparently mentioned B12 shots as a potential treatment, though was encouraged that Mika improved so much with the bland diet, so thought we might be able to manage the problem through dietary changes. He's still suggesting the Purina HA diet. I'll see what he thinks about a beef-based grain-free food when I talk to him tonight.

 

Anybody dealt with low B12? Could this be a result of diet sensitivity and chronic diarrhea/soft stools? Or does it necessarily point to some kind of GI disease as the cause? (Is the incompatable diet causing diarrhea which causes low B12 or is the low B12 causing the diarrhea?)

[a_daerr]

I'm surprised that your vet suggested Purina HA (hypoallergenic) instead of Purina EN (gastroenteric). Was Mika experiencing actual allergy symptoms (itching, licking, scratching), or just digestive problems? Either way, I'm not sure I would do grain free. Sometimes greys on grain-free have a hard time keeping weight on, which might be a problem if your dog is already B12 deficient.

[Guest OPointyDog]

I talked to the vet today about the Purina HA vs. Purina EN. The hypoallergenic (HA) has hydrolyzed protein, which basically means all the protein in the food has been broken down into the constituent amino acids. With things like IBD or food intolerance, the body reacts to the foreign protein, so if you break it down into amino acids, then you should avoid the reaction to the protein. I think because Mika was having such a hard time with all different kinds of food, the vet thought that going for the simplest form might stop the problem. Plus the Purina EN has chicken ingredients, and Mika has not done well on chicken in the past.

 

We chatted for awhile about the pros and cons of trying a few other more commercially available (and affordable) foods, and I ultimately decided we will try out the food tbhounds suggested - Solid Gold Wolf King, which is bison/fish based and low in fat with moderate fiber. I haven't given any to Mika yet - he had a loose stool this morning, so I figured I'd let things firm up again. I also found a couple of kinds of canned food that are all beef - so that's also a potential supplement to his food.

 

Best guess from the vet is that Mika has food intolerances that have caused chronic diarrhea, and it's caused the wall of his intestine to thicken and he's not absorbing nutrients (particularly B12) very well. If we can get him onto a food that allows his intestines to heal, then the B12 can be absorbed again and he should improve. We're going to do our best to find him a good food that will keep the diarrhea at bay, and as long as that's controlled, we'll test again for B12 in a month. If it's still low, we'll do more tests then to find an alternative underlying cause.

[krissn333]

Solid Gold MMillenia (http://www.solidgoldhealth.com/products/index.php?product=5&code=1601) is a beef-based food, and good quality. I know that Diane (Burpdog) had some issues with her pups with it lately, but, I fed that for a while with no issues other than they were bored with it because it's bland, and I switched them to grain free when I got Pinky (she had lupus and grain free helped her skin issues).

 

My Sutra ate Solid Gold Wolf King for a while too with good results http://www.solidgoldhealth.com/products/index.php?product=62&code=1712

[Walliered]

My grey, Huck, had IBD. He was on B12 shots. We started out with one shot a week for 6 weeks and then 1 shot a month after that. The B12 medicine is really cheap and my vet just gave me the needles. But, I think you can purchase them from Walmart. I know I got my allergy shot syringes from Walmart. Anyway, it helped him absorb his food. But, nothing can cure IBD (my vet said), so you just try to manage it. He came from the track with it.

[Guest OPointyDog]

Thanks - yes, I looked at Solid Gold MMillennia. I had a hard time deciding between that and the bison (Wolf King). The bison is a bit lower in fat, so I ended up going with that. Plus the store only had MMilennia in 30lb bags in stock. We'll try that next if the Wolf King doesn't pan out.

 

The vet did mention B12 shots, and we'll definitely do that if we can't manage the deficiency through his diet. I think at this point we're not sure if the episode is a solvable food intolerance or a more long-term chronic IBD issue. Time will tell!

[a_daerr]

How's the new food working out?

[Guest OPointyDog]

The jury is still out, I think. I started putting a handful of the new food in with the hamburger and rice mix on Saturday night. Sunday things looked pretty good, but this morning's output was pretty soft and more yellow than I'd like. It wasn't liquid, though. Even on the hamburger and rice mix alone, he occasionally is having really soft and more yellowish stools, but on the whole they're better. I'm going pretty slowly.

 

I've switched to feeding him smaller meals 3x per day in the hopes maybe that will help too. So he's getting about 1.5 cups of hamburger and rice, 3 times a day, plus about 1/3 cup of the WolfKing at each meal.

 

The good news is he eats like a lab - he'll eat ANYTHING. So at least I don't have to deal with picky-ness!

[Guest Giselle]

Just a thought: Dairy products are not "natural" food items for the majority of adult animals. It's actually pretty fascinating, but the Western medical community didn't even realize that most people are lactose intolerant until about 1970-1980's. The reality is that most adult animals aren't supposed to consume dairy products, at least not in large amounts. And, as far as we know, only a very small subset of European, some Middle Eastern, and some African ethnicities have the genetic capacity to truly digest lactose. So, my first suggestion is to nix the cottage cheese in your beef and rice mix. I feel that you'll have much more consistently firm poops if you eliminate the cheese.

 

My second thought is that "protein" doesn't just refer to "meat". Indeed, some of the most insidious diet-related human diseases (like Celiac disease) are responses to PLANT proteins. So, just because your pup didn't do well on one chicken/rice brand doesn't mean that he's intolerant of chicken. He may in fact be intolerant to some type of rice. Because we as consumers don't receive a whole lot of information about what exactly is in our dog's kibble, it is very difficult to choose kibbles based on ingredients alone. The fact is that we don't know exactly what cuts of meat they're using, what types of grain they're using, what parts of the grain they're using, etc. Also, a lot of the "grain-free" kibbles use a lot of starchy vegetables, like potatoes, which are notorious for being very high on the glycemic index. So, my second suggestion is to look into doing a home-cooked diet. If your dog has a true food intolerance, sometimes the best option is home-cooked. As someone living with a food intolerance, let me tell you that it's a small price to pay for a functioning GI system

[Guest OPointyDog]

So, my first suggestion is to nix the cottage cheese in your beef and rice mix. I feel that you'll have much more consistently firm poops if you eliminate the cheese.

 

Yes, that's very reasonable, I think. Our other grey had rather adverse reactions to yogurt, actually, and I had the same thought. So I've actually already done this - I stopped adding the cottage cheese last week. As of today, he's getting white rice, boiled beef, and about 1/3 cup of Solid Gold WolfKing at each meal.

 

 

 

My second thought is that "protein" doesn't just refer to "meat". Indeed, some of the most insidious diet-related human diseases (like Celiac disease) are responses to PLANT proteins. So, just because your pup didn't do well on one chicken/rice brand doesn't mean that he's intolerant of chicken.

 

Also a good thought - and well I know, since I have a severe intolerance to soy, myself. It is often very difficult to determine which ingredient is causing the problem. I could try cooking him some chicken sometime and see what happens. If I end up having to cook for him, I will, but it sure would be convenient to find a food he can eat.

 

As a scientist, there's a part of me that really wants to put everything he eats into a spreadsheet and try a statistical analysis to see if I can find a correlation with what's causing the problem - though I'd have to come up with some kind of a scoring system for his poop.... A poop rubric! Ha!

[Guest Giselle]

Lucky for you, poop scoring already exists I think vet med uses the same chart as human med:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_stool_scale

 

I think if you ever get to a diet that gives you 80% firm poops, I would be happy with it. Some people and animals are truly just born this way. Good luck!

[Guest OPointyDog]

Lucky for you, poop scoring already exists I think vet med uses the same chart as human med:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_stool_scale

 

I think if you ever get to a diet that gives you 80% firm poops, I would be happy with it. Some people and animals are truly just born this way. Good luck!

 

Okay, that's pretty cool. Though they're really missing the pudding stage, I think. Kind of like Stage 6, but not fluffy, but rather mucus-y. He also frequently has poop that will sometimes start out as a 4 or 5, and then transition more into pudding or stage 6 or 7. (Sadly, we use rather disgusting food references - "pudding", "milkshake", and "soft serve" are common).

 

I guess I could use my Munsell Soil Color chart to score the color.... My recollection is that yellow or lighter colored stool means that it's traveling too fast through the intestinal system, so darker is preferable.