I Know This Has Been Asked A Lot,,but Is It Close To Time?

[cello]

When Lady was very ill at the start of her disease, I resorted to grinding kibble. I ground the dry kibble in a blender. Poured the mix into a large mixing bowl. Add boneless skinless cooked chicken breasts shredded and homemade chicken broth. Then I spread this mixture onto baking sheets and cooked it in the oven until the consistency of cookies! Broke them into pieces and fed them to her in a bowl! Yes, this was a HUGE amount of work, but it seemed to get her over the hump and back to eating something. Now we keep Lady alive (literally - I am not kidding) with boiled elbow noodles topped with boiled skinless/boneless chicken breasts that are pulled. This is in addition to her kibble that she hates but will for some reason right now - eat dry! Good luck!

[Guest FordRacingRon]

Well,,back from my meals on wheels delivering and stopped by El Pollo. gave Leia some of that meat with the meat I made,,no problem. gave her a little bit of burger from my lunch, no problem. Little more thigh meat, no problem. Ground up some kibble and put just a pinch on some more thigh meat,,,that turned the chicken to poison and she walked away from the bowl. As a final experiment,,cleaned bowl, more thigh meat, no problem

 

Plus, she is starting to eat her cookies again that were on the "no Eat List". These are good, high protein, cookies with almost the same ingredients as kibble (no grain cookies). So Cookies and meat seem to be fine. But any official dog food right now is poison. She still has runny poo because, I surmise, she is having a lousy diet. We are going to try and force feed her some pumpkin tonight.

 

This dog food hatred has me just goign nuts though.

 

B-12 seems to be what has somewhat got her going though.

[cello]

Ron that is exactly why I went to the trouble of making 'kibble cookies'! Try it! You may find that she will eat a bowlful of these. Just don't tell her that it is really kibble! Shhhhhhhhhhhh!

[Guest FordRacingRon]

Ron that is exactly why I went to the trouble of making 'kibble cookies'! Try it! You may find that she will eat a bowlful of these. Just don't tell her that it is really kibble! Shhhhhhhhhhhh!

Well I am not a baker but I think I can follow that recipe. I will probably give it a go tomorrow. But since I am not a baker,,what oven temP?

 

Plan B will try tonight,,mixing some of the kibble dust with baby food,,her other newest favorite.

 

 

PS: I case some of you wonder,,in 2009 the Discovery channel had a contest for the biggest animal sports fan and Leia,,using the picture on this page,,made the cut to the final 64. Then is was like a college bracket where votes counted and they whittled down the field which somehow we made it to the final. We were against a bulldog from Chicago in Bears gear. I had a way to cheat but I also needed voters and GT helped tip the scale and we took out the bulldog (not literally of course!). For you total non-sports fans,,Leia is just wearing a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball cap. In the bigger picture, behind her is my jumbo collection of bobbleheads.

Edited August 21, 2014 by FordRacingRon

[Batmom]

If she doesn't like kibble, I wouldn't feed it. It's useful as a concentrated source of calories, but not if it turns her off eating . You might offer her some in a separate dish from time to time -- tastes can change -- but otherwise, feed what she'll eat. Give her a vitamin. To start out, aim for @ 1000-1500 calories per day, lower end of that if she's not real big and not real active.

 

Scritchies (and tasty chicken bits! ) to your best girl .

[Riverhound]

How do the GT gurus feel about things like Nutri-cal? I can remember mom feeding that to the ancient (17-20 year old) cats when I was little.

 

http://t.petco.com/product/7708/Tomlyn-Nutri-Cal-for-Dogs.aspx

[gracegirl]

I had El Pollo Loco for dinner last night and thought of Leia.

[Guest FordRacingRon]

She seems to be getting back to her old self a bit but dog food is still poison. Although we snuck about 1/4 cup ground kibble into her baby food last night and she ate 3/4 of it before she realized what we were up to. at about 11 pm she got hungry and I gave her a half of a tub of Rachel Ray dogfood and she ate it. It seems as though if we wait until 10-11 pm we can get her to eat most of anything. But before that, anything has to be El Pollo based.

 

I can't go to el Pool everyday so we are trying to ween her off of El Pollo and onto home cooked. I may have to just grill her chicken. I think we are getting somewhere,,,now the puzzler is how to stop the diharrea. We force fed her pumpkin last night,,helped a bit. this medicine the vet gave seems to not help much. Maybe an Immodium or two may help.

[Burpdog]

 

Can a dog live on chicken thighs? Seriously. Can a dog live on chicken thighs, chicken strips and baby food? We give her vitamins too.

Magic ate WalMart roasted chickens for a year with kibble for a week and maybe once in a while roast beef.

 

As long as she eats!

 

 

It seems as though if we wait until 10-11 pm we can get her to eat most of anything.

Very common among sick dogs and advanced age dogs. Last night Huston ate at 8, 10, 12 & 2 a.m. and something different each time

 

btw -- Annamet grain free chicken reduced fat is a hit with all my guys. If you get it, if she won't eat it with a little water on it, try soaking in very warm water and let it swell up.

Edited August 23, 2014 by Burpdog

[zimsmom]

How about cat food the wet stuff. When zim skips a few meals which she has done for years this is what I give her to keep some calories in her.

Edited August 24, 2014 by zimsmom

[greyhead]

We're doing the same eating dance with Shane, Ron. He seems to have a kidney infection, which has kept me busy and is why I stepped off this thread. In our case, antibiotics and sub-q fluids are the ticket to recovery, but the a/b's don't help appetite at all. But we've had good luck with scrambled eggs and Costco rotisserie chicken. A whole chicken is only $5! I know the dark meat is better, but we're not going to waste the white meat since he'll eat it!

A FB friend suggested putting his canned kidney-diet food in a blender with some Ensure. She had used that for syringe feeding a dog for a while, and he ate it on his own when he got a little better. Maybe you could do something like that with Leia's dog food? In any case, you guys have been in my thoughts, and I do check in here to see how it's going.

[Guest FordRacingRon]

So,,,today is Sunday and she ate home made chicken thighs,,no El Pollo at all so that is a great start. she didn't want the chicken but I mixed it with Chicken and gravy baby food from Gerbers and she wolfed it down. I found this small tub of dog food that look really like just meat with no grain at all called Nature's Recipe and she ate two tubs of it (think small like the little Ceaser tubs). And of course the obligatory chicken strips.

 

Question about this,,,I brought home Nature's Recipe Cat Food today not dog food,,,tub is identical. What I notice as far as label is the dog food is 9% protein, the cat is 11%. CAN I KEEP feeding her the cat food. I know she will tire of it in 2-3 days and a new search will be on. I want her to get her protien so I like the idea of the higher protien of the cat vs the dog food,,but she is eating almost all straight chicken anyway.

 

Now I have to get her back to kibble along with this stuff because her poos are horrific. Also, first day I have given her no dose of Mirtazapine and she still ate. IMHO she must have really been sick to her stomach and maybe even a bog of some type and she is finally getting past it. The thing is it changed her eating habits and like which also make me wonder if she got something bad in dog food which is why she just isn't interested. I may try Burpdog's suggestion.

 

So now I have to find a no-nonsense kibble to get her back on.

 

I attribute most of our luck to her getting well,,,or the B-12 shot. The only two things i can think of. I seriously thought this was the end for her but I prayed to let it not be.

[KF_in_Georgia]

My angel Sam developed the beginnings of an ulcer while taking meloxicam. Coming out of that trouble, he no longer wanted crunchy food (although crunchy biscuits were always fine). It took several weeks of kibble grinding (six weeks? two months?) before he was willing to go back to eating kibble that hadn't been ground. I just varied the stuff I added to his kibble. Flavored yogurt was popular. Oatmeal cooked the night before could be served cold in the morning--maybe with a little honey added as well as the kibble. Rice, potatoes, chicken, eggs--anything that made the kibble look less like Post Grape Nuts cereal. Sometimes, some canine wet food, but not the feline stuff; in the past I had given him turkey cat food one Thanksgiving, and the results had not been good, so I steered clear of cat food. Because Sam was getting three cups of (ground) kibble a day, I wasn't worried about whether the tasty add-ins were balanced nutrition; they were just present to get the kibble into him.

 

Sam had almost permanent soft to runny poop. It responded well to metronidazole, but when he finished the metronidazole, diarrhea was back within four days. (I was plotting things on a calendar--all his meds for each day, the days the diarrhea came back, etc., and that convinced the vet.) The vet put Sam on a maintenance dose of metronidazole. We slowly decreased from a regular dose to half a pill every other day. If things started looking bad again, we'd just go to half a pill every day for a few days, then cut back again. It helped tremendously. Long-term use of metronidazole--especially, of high doses--can trigger neurological problems, but Sam's dose was very small and--because Sam was 13 and had several issues at once--we weren't particularly worried about the long term. And, if I remember correctly, any neurological problems will reverse themselves if you stop the metronidazole. (Tylan never worked for Sam, so that wasn't an option.)

Edited August 25, 2014 by KF_in_Georgia

[gracegirl]

How's Leia doing this week?

[Guest FordRacingRon]

How's Leia doing this week?

Leia is doing fine,,thank you. Her diet still consists of chicken thighs and baby food with a bit of dog food tossed in. Still having trouble with Diarrhea but i think it is because of the baby food. pumpkin and/or oatmeal barely work. I am going to get in touch with vet again but i was on jury duty this past week.

 

Her personality is normal again,,,so I think the biggest key was the b-12 shot. I have my pupper back.

 

What I find strange is how her tastes changed really over night. What was food to her (like kibble and hamburger) are now poison. I know dogs tastes will change, as do ours as we age,,but I never expected her to completely change her eating habits in 2 days.

[Houndtime]

You can try sweet potato and white potato mix to help with the diarrhea.

[Guest FordRacingRon]

You can try sweet potato and white potato mix to help with the diarrhea.

Like you mean make one of each and make a combo for her to eat,,,I didn't know potatoes worked. She basically refuses pumpkin but I have a sly way of getting oatmeal into her but it has very little effect. I can get her to eat potatoes.

 

I assume this situation is because she eats baby food. Never had a child or a baby but if I did, I would assume this is what it looks like when they go.

[Batmom]

Potatoes *cause* diarrhea here.

 

Ask your vet for some Endosorb. Cheap, simple, works. Basically clay -- it helps to firm the stool by soaking up excess water.

[scullysmum]

Potatoes *cause* diarrhea here.

 

Ask your vet for some Endosorb. Cheap, simple, works. Basically clay -- it helps to firm the stool by soaking up excess water.

Potatoes always worked a treat for firm poops here, both with Sadi and Johnny....I put it down to them being Irish Edited August 31, 2014 by scullysmum

[Guest FordRacingRon]

Potatoes *cause* diarrhea here.

 

Ask your vet for some Endosorb. Cheap, simple, works. Basically clay -- it helps to firm the stool by soaking up excess water.

Ordered Endosrob online,,,thanks. In the meantime I may try potato as what can it hurt since she already is hurting.

[Batmom]

Yeah, I didn't mean to totally turn you away from potato, more of a warning just in case..... Some things other than Endosorb we have used to firm up stool when the problem is Weird Diet: Cheerios, Shredded Wheat, Metamucil wafers (has to be the wafers, not the powder) . If the problem is bacterial or inflamed gut, one of my dogs does much better on Tylocine (Tylan) than on metronidazole (flagyl).

[Guest FordRacingRon]

Yeah, I didn't mean to totally turn you away from potato, more of a warning just in case..... Some things other than Endosorb we have used to firm up stool when the problem is Weird Diet: Cheerios, Shredded Wheat, Metamucil wafers (has to be the wafers, not the powder) . If the problem is bacterial or inflamed gut, one of my dogs does much better on Tylocine (Tylan) than on metronidazole (flagyl).

Well I would bet on this being her weird diet. She eats chicken thigh meat (doesn't care if they are right or left,,,that was for the Bill lovers out there), some canned dog food and baby food. That makes the bulk of her feed,,minus cookies and chicken strips. If I could wager a guess i would guess its the baby food,,but I sneak things into her with the baby food like oatmeal. Oatmeal was my go to when she decided about 2 years ago that pumpkin was poison. Oatmeal worked great. I am goign to try and sneak kibble into her again today but my dog is more bloodhound they greyhound. she can sniff out evil food around every corner.

Metamucil too,,huh?

[Batmom]

Metamucil wafers, maybe half or 3/4s of one wafer (there are two wafers in each little packet) twice a day. I think some people do find the powder helps, but I only notice a difference with the wafers. Who knows why .

[Guest FordRacingRon]

Potatoes *cause* diarrhea here.

 

Ask your vet for some Endosorb. Cheap, simple, works. Basically clay -- it helps to firm the stool by soaking up excess water.

Ding DIng Ding Ding,,,we have a winner.

 

After however many weeks of runny poo,,,,one day of Endosorb gave us an 80% success rate. I bought this ginourmous bottle off of Amazon that I assume will last long after I am dead but after only 2 of the 500 pills Leia finally accomplished my goal and for the first time in 2 weeks we didn't have a middle of the night wake up call. Same diet but adding Endosorb worked.

 

How long can she stay on this?

[Batmom]

I would check with your vet but AFAIK, they can stay on indefinitely as long as there's no suspicion of a blockage.