GreytXpctations

Sorry to hear about the positive for Lola. I agree with the others about the Advocate. It seems to be the only thing that works over time. I was a firm believer in HG+ monthly for preventative and two rounds of Panacur (often 1 round would do it) to clear hooks, but nothing worked until we stopped the HG+ and started with the Advocate. First negative last week for Cita. The vet thinks she may have had them the whole time now from the track, but it took them awhile to come back after the adoption deworming. Carlos never had them and Hobbes cleared faster than her, so wasn't in a larval leak situation.

Well, I sincerely wish you good luck with the hooks and the transition to the new food. I will be testing Cita next week for hooks, so will know how our luck is going then. At least the food issues are fixed for now.

If your dogs are in the 70ish lb range then 2 cups twice a day sounds like a good starting point, but it will depend on the food itself. There should be a chart on the bag with the daily feeding amount by weight. This chart is not gospel, but a guideline. You may have to feed a bit more or a bit less. Every response here will likely be a bit different, but I like to keep my dogs within a few pounds of race weight, where they still have definition but are not skin and bones either. Things like the three rib or two rib rule will depend on your dog's build, and I have had a few that this didn't apply to at all. My biggest didn't race, so I have no starting reference other than I should know where his ribs are without having them stand out all the time. With what you have described, it does sound like you are feeding them too much. Despite the sad eyes and emoting of broken hearts, scaling back on the extras will not hurt them, and the less extras that you give them, the easier it will be to figure out the actual dosing of food that they need. My goal is to have them on a food that works for them so they do not need extras. That way I can tell if the food works for them, providing healthy skin and coats and firm stool. Treats become actual treats rather than an expected item. Believe me, they are still very spoiled. But they are also healthy, and if something changes, I don't have to limit a bunch of different things to identify the problem. Good luck. There are no daft questions. It is only daft not to ask, when there are answers readily available.

I think red tomato is ok for dogs. The plant and leaves are bad and green ones are not good either. The acid and whole seeds can also aggravate some dogs too, but if the food has tomato pomace it should be ok. It is the byproduct from juicing and has high fiber and vitamin C. Like beet pulp is a byproduct of extracting sugars. Does anyone remember when Iams was an independent company with only one type of food, and it looked like kibble life-savers? I may be dating myself here :/ Good luck with the food issues. You and Percy need some easy time for a change.

It seems like a long time here, even though we've only been on the Advocate/Panacur protocol for 6ish weeks (3 rounds). But then again, were ran the traditional treatment of 2 rounds of Panacur, then two more of Drontal before starting this newer treatment, so it really has been a long time. It is too bad that these companies keep messing with their formulas. I have two of mine on Eukanuba and it is working great, but sounds like I just switched from Iams in time to avoid a repeat of the situation that Diamond Naturals put us through. Eukanuba is a Mars food, like Iams and Nutro and others, so I feel like I might be on borrowed time here still. If you didn't have good luck on Kirkland, then you may want to try something else rather than go back to it. There has to be something better for Percy out there. Also, keep track of anything else that he is eating. Even treats or chewys can cause the soft stool if the food is ok. Meanwhile, I am still looking for a new food for Carlos, who has stayed hook free this whole time. We are testing for hooks again at three weeks after the last treatment. That way if she is positive, we can start the next treatment on the three week cycle still. If not, we will just go back to the monthly cycle with Advocate alone for three months until it is gone, retest and switch back to HG+ if still all clear. Here's hoping.

Great news.

I couldn't tell if it made mine sleepy. Is it just the regular 5mg melatonin that you can get in the people vitamin section? Just curious. Mine just have the regular kennel bald spots, except Hobbes who wasn't a track dog. He has a full coat everywhere.

I finished the third round of the Advocate/Panacur treatment yesterday. The yard had been treated with the wondercide twice now, and the dogs have had no visible sign of hooks now for weeks. I am hoping that the third time is a charm and this is it. No one seems sick or distressed. Stool is firm and consistent. Activity and general health seem normal. Fingers crossed. Testing in three weeks for Cita.

One side effect is sleepiness. How would anyone tell with greyhounds??

More good news, Avisher224! Hopefully all that good news will be contagious. I think LaFlaca used the hose sprayer for the wondercide, but we used the concentrate mixed with water in a one gallon garden sprayer (the pump kind), that I already had. It was very easy to do this way. You just set the nozzle to a fan spray and pump up the sprayer for pressure. It really smells like cedar.

Cita quit eating all of her Iams, so I switched her and Hobbes over to Ekanuba large breed after finishing the last deworming. I may just leave them on it for good, and find something new for Carlos. I was hoping to put them on whatever I found for him if it worked, but still haven't found a new food yet. Someone suggested Rachel Ray Just 6, which is a low protein, limited ingredient lamb based food, which ticks all the boxes for him, but I need to look into it a bit more before attempting a switch. I am not ready to deal with potential runs yet again. Hook wise, the last treatment went ok with no side effects. I have both yards treated with the Wondercide and will do yard 1 again this weekend weather permitting. Stool sample into the vet next week before the round 3 of treatment. Hopefully it will be clear and I just need to use the Advantage Multi. Carlos has stayed clear through all of it on HG+. Right now, everyone has a nice shiny coat, is at good weight and looks healthy.

I did the last round of Advantage Multi and Safeguard without any negative effects on Cita. Everything is solid on the Iams, and i did manage to get my lawn cut and one yard sprayed with the LaFlaca's wonder potion. I will do the other yard this weekend after cutting and move the dogs back to the other yard for a few weeks until it it time to retreat. Retest for hooks at the end of next week. Hopefully, I will get an all clear, then will likely retest two of three in six weeks. I am keeping Hobbes and Cita on Advantage Multi for the time being. Carlos has stayed clean the whole time on HG+, but hasn't been anywhere else like the other two were. I do need to find a new food still. Carlos is not doing as well on the Canidae as he was on the Diamond (before they changed it), and i would like to upgrade the other two still. Hopefully I can defy the odds one more time and find a food that will work for all three. First the hooks, then the food.

Starting round 2 tomorrow on Cita. Advantage Multi followed by 3 days of Panacur/Safeguard. My Wondercide came in this week from Amazon with my Safeguard for goats. I am just waiting for a window of dryness long enough to cut and bag the lawn then spray the solution down in the yards. No one is showing any outward signs of hooks right now, which is a plus. On a side note, while the two dogs are doing well on the Iams, they do seem bored with it and do not attack it with the same vigor as the Diamond Naturals beef. I also have six of the world's saddest eyes every time I open the cookie cabinet, since they are off the treats. I need to move my coffee to a different location. CGS and PaddysDad, thanks for the links in this thread. Advantage Multi is half the price through the mail and safeguard works out to about a third of the price.

I can't feed Carlos Iams. He has special requirements and is on this https://www.chewy.com/canidae-all-life-stages-less-active/dp/32226 and having good luck with it but it is pricey (less pricey than an Rx diet). I also agree about the treats. It might be good to use kibble as treats so you can isolate the cause of the problem.

Great news!!

I have two dogs on Iams green bag and they firmed right up again. I was planning to grab Eukanuba, but they didn't have it and Iams was the closest thing to it they had. Both of them seem to be the gold standard for firm poop for most people.

I know what you mean. I felt the same way about the Diamond branded food. It's such a crap shoot (sorry) trying to find a food that works and meets all the needs. Carlos has specific restrictions, so finding a food for him is tricky. I would have been happy staying with the pre-December Diamond Naturals.

Good point. In my mind I was just thinking of a small bag, which apparently they don't make for the large breed food. For me the crisis was the food. It was what was causing the soft stool. I know what you mean by getting excited over firm poop. I switched one dog over in one day his poops were so bad, and the other over a couple days. With the other one, he has issues with proteins and alkalinity and a sensitivity to corn, so I can't give him Iams. I had trouble finding a food that work for him, let alone all three, but the Diamond did that until they changed the formula. Even with the beet pulp and chicory root, it didn't help things after they changed the recipe. Eukanuba chicken comes in a small bag. It isn't exactly the same as the large breed chicken (higher in protein), but might be an ok test to see the effect, and then be close enough for an easy transition to the large breed formula if it helps.

Great news! It is always so much easier to only have to deal with one problem at a time. At least you know what to expect the next time around if he loses his appetite for a day with the next treatment. Mild infestation is good news too. I have the same here and am on a three round treatment plan as well. I haven't been able to get rid of the hooks completely yet, but only recently added the Advantage Multi, so hope that will make the difference.

You might try a small bag of food as a test and mix it in at 1/3 to see if things improve or not. I know you said that Percy didn't like the Iams, but maybe the Eukauba would work for him. At 1/3 new food, it should be weak enough not to upset his digestion too much, but strong enough to tell if he turns his nose up at, and also enough to show some type of improvement if there would be any.

I didn't really even know much about it until this year. I used HG+ monthly and never had an issue with hooks until recently. Normally, a treatment with Panacur would knock out the hooks and HG+ would keep them controlled. My newest has hooks that won't go away and I assumed that she picked them up at a greyhound event that had a lot of new dogs at it, since she had no sign of them before. The Advantage Multi is supposed to build up in the tissue so that when larva latch on they die before they can get to egg laying stage, so eventually all the eggs hatch and no more are laid (as I understand it). I think HG+ would just wipe out any resident hooks before they could get established, but that would trigger whatever eggs were laid to hatch again and the cycle would repeat, but still keep from getting out of control. Some stuff says "treatment of", some says "control of " and some products say "control and removal of", depending on the product or the parasite. I haven't figured out if this is all marketing and semantics or if they actually mean different things. My greys were temporarily on HG (not Plus) without the Pyrantel, when they picked up the hooks, so the Pyrantel may play a big part of keeping things at bay too. I had unfortunately used my HG+ on a foster and had it replaced by the group with just ivermectin, which I eventually used on my dogs. Another possibility is that she had hooks/larval leak before we got her and they were wiped out through deworming, then kept at bay by the HG+, until it just couldn't keep up anymore. I still haven't heard a definitive answer and do not know if they vets know either. They seem to be figuring this out as they go as well, but recognize that the old methods aren't effective anymore with the new dogs. My oldest has been hook free the whole time and the middle boy has had low level infestation that seems to now be under control. He was at the events with his sister, who hasn't been able to completely shake them. But this indicates that they aren't immune to the treatment or it isn't environmental, otherwise all three would have it. maybe these new dogs are just coming off the track so infested with eggs, it takes time for them to completely clear them.

I switched from HG+ to Advantage Multi for the time being. No oral meds at this time except for the Panacur or Drontal. When I have several months of no hooks on all dogs i will likely go back to HG+. I am going to use the cedar oil product on my yards and just keep an eye out for ticks. In the past I just used HG+ monthly for heartworm prevention and Advantix every couple of months for fleas, ticks and mosquitoes. I'm in a semi-urban neighborhood and haven't had an issue with ticks in the past.

Advantage Multi (Advocate) is a topical. All the dogs we have had here with hooks usually have normal to increased appetite, with severe infestations causing weight loss and increased hunger even with over feeding. Treatment can cause appetite loss (Drontal).

Diamond finally called me back today to tell me that QC confirmed that there was nothing wrong with the food batch I purchased, AND the person denied a formula change until I reminded him that he already told me they had changed it and repeated what he told me during our last call. So I caught him in a lie. The first rep I spoke with denied knowing about any formula change. Honestly, the two last calls were more about them doing damage control than any concern for my dogs. Fool me twice... Really disappointed. They went from the best food for my dogs to being unusable.

Thanks for joining in on the conversation here. Hopefully by all comparing notes we can help each other out. Has it been two years continually infected or two years of infected / clear / infected? What treatment protocol are you on or have you been on? Did your grey come with the hooks or acquire them along the way from somewhere? So far, I think I am the only one here who seems to have picked up these hooks along the way. We seem to have almost eliminated them, but can't quite get them down to zero.