Food for sensitive stomach

[saintlyjimjams]

My retriever has always had quite a sensitive stomach - often first poo of day is solid but becomes increasingly less so during the day. I wondered whether anyone had recommendations for good food for sensitive stomachs. He seems to do better on fish based food. I've thought about BARF but think I would struggle with it.

Would appreciate any recommendations. He's also bonkers and a bit excitable (he's young but seems more bonkers and excitable than many dogs his age that I see) so any calming foods would be good as well it may be unrelated but having kids who react to food it's made me wonder.....

What are you feeding him at the moment? We feed Burns which seems to have done us well. All the dogs have shiny coats and are the right size, and although the sacks are expensive, with 3 dogs we get through about a 15kg sack a month. He may be getting too much protein if he's very excitable. There are a lot of good dried foods out there. You don't want anything with animal remains making up the protein, or with vegetable scraps. Many manufacturers make a chicken and rice or fish and rice food, and there are quite a lot of hypoalergenic foods out there.

We had a similar problem, making picking up poo on walks a challenge I did not enjoy. We've found 'vitalin sensitive' best for our springer. Sold in our local farmers store and at the cheaper end of the market. We'd tried JWB and Burns but they weren't right for him.

Thanks for the suggestions. JWB was disastrous for him as well. A few people have mentioned Burns - am wondering whether to try it or the fish for dogs food (did someone once mention that on here or did I dream it). He's very fussy about kibble - am wondering whether to try fish oils on top anyway (esp as he seems prone to dry skins - honestly he fits our family perfectly right in there with the kids with skin issues, and dodgy guts )

My dog is the same and does very well on lamb nature diet.

Nature diet do a fish one. It's a wet food which is basically just fish, veg and rice so no additives to worry about.

My dog has also had the same problem. We're now feeding him Barking Heads Fuss pot which is Salmon and Potato. It works a treat.

I had this with my old dog (when he was young, and I tried literally everything, even prescription diets). He ended up on Chappie (the dried stuff- the tinned stuff smells awful!) and even although it is cheap (and as some of my vet colleagues would have it, nasty) it suited him and he lived to 16.5 on it. High fibre, low protein, admittedly not great quality food, but he (and witchydog) seem to have thrived on it. Worth a try?

My collie (1 year) has had a dodgy tum since she was a young poo i.e. liquid green poo and unbelievably flatulent. Also, for a young dog, her coat was rather dull.

I tried several dried foods (Royal Canin, JWB, and Origen) but none seemed to agree with her. I eventually moved her on to a Raw Food diet and her poos improved overnight - small, solid and brown! Her coat is beautiful and glossy and her teeth are sparkling

I am still a bit of a Raw Food wuss with limited freezer space, so I feed her Natural Instinct in the morning and chicken wings in the evening. Once a week she has fish (frozen fillets from Sainsbury's economy range) with an occasional tin of sardines, dollop of live plain yoghurt, and egg (shell and all). I expected feeding Raw to be a huge hassle, but it is much easier than I thought it would be.

oops, that should be since she was a young "pup"

I shall be watching this thread with interest. Our rescued whippety lurcher suffered a horrendous infection in November resulting on him being hospitalised on drips for 3 weeks, he had 3 blood plasma transfusions, he was pooing pure blood, protein levels through the floor, aneamic etc. Three vets all said he would not pull through. He did though and has now been home for a month. He is on daily steroids, we are gradually trying to reduce the amount without much success, and his poos are sloppy. At the moment he is on Vet recommended Hills Prescription diet (which is stupidly expensive) but at some point I will need to change him onto something. Would love to do Barf but not sure the vet will like this idea...

So will watch this thread and make a note of foods recommended so I can run them past our vets to see which one they will recommend....

BehindLockNumberNine - Wonderful news that your whippety lurcher is doing so well! I remember your thread and what a rough time it was for you.

Re Prescription Science Diet - I think you will find that the reason why some vets are so keen on it is because they get a commission from the sales! If you look at the ingredient list, you will see that its quality isn't that great - lots of fillers, etc. Our old vet was constantly recommending various types of prescription Hills for our elderly dogs. At one point, we were buying three different varieties for teeth, joints and liver support at vast expense! None made any difference to our dogs' well-being.

We changed vets last year and our new (wonderful) vet has been very supportive of raw feeding, despite displaying Hills in the waiting room. In fact, he doesn't rate Hills, but says some clients prefer it because it is marketed as a prescription food.

I would love to move to a raw diet, my gut is telling me this Hills stuff is no good. I don't even buy the prescription diet from the vet himself, I buy it online because it is a smidge cheaper...

He is doing well, thanks WoodRose. But his poo is still sloppy and I cannot get it to firm up...

Sigh...

Another one here who moved over to raw and wished we'd done so years ago. Our third grey has a very sensitive tum and last year, this really flared up with a bad attack of colitis. He was in a very bad way. Since we moved to raw, his poos have been firmer, he looks happy, healthy and his coat gleams. Unfortunately he still has toxic wind, but I suspect that's a permanent feature. We get those frozen packs from PAH, which make it really easy. We put another freezer out in the garage, and now we order it online in bulk, along with the packs of frozen tripe. On this base, we add in various bits, such as oily fish, odd bits of pasta and rice, eggs, leftover veggies, roasted squash, chicken wings etc. All three dogs seem to be flourishing, and we still have the odd treat such as Bonio and pigs ears.

The thing about the blocks is that they make doing a raw diet very easy -you don't have to worry about having a good butcher near you (we don't), there's no YUK factor, and it's no mess or hassle. People with good butchers nearby can do very well for scraps, carcasses etc making it a very cheap option.

Scuttle, do you think it would (eventually) be safe to try Sam on raw given his health history? Our vet was a bit scathing, worrying about salmonella etc ('it could kill him') where his words...

But so many people seem to rave about it... (Mind you, how many of those have a dog with IBD?)

My boxers have Royal Canin Vet Breed and I can definately see the difference ( 2 solid poos and no farting) !!!

I wish the whole raw food diet hadn't been made overcomplicated by talk of supplements/scary offal/% of different meats to be given/veg meals... it's really not difficult at all!

My dog (runny guts from day 1, tried loads of different foods to no avail) now eats chicken portions mainly. The cheapest ones I can find (Iceland do a frozen bag that'll last him a week for £3) and pretty much all our leftovers, if he'll eat it he gets it.

If he gets constipated he tends to munch more grass at the park, so if I see him doing this I chuck some veggies his way, if he gets fat enough that I can't feel his ribs I give him a bit less food, if he's hungry he lets me know.

Seriously, dogs have millions of years of evolution surviving on anything, how come so many have irritable stomachs nowadays? It's the petfood causing it!

Which one is that SP? The one to aid digestion?? And is it a prescription only food?

randomness, that is my gut feeling too! But then, if whippety boy has a sensitive gut and is unable to digest tricky things then raw may not suit?
He was not always sensitive, he picked up a horrendous bug in October, was on IV liquid and IV antibiotics at the vets for 2 weeks, had 3 blood plasma transfusions, liver enzymes through the roof, protein levels through the floor, was not expected to survive.
This but has permanently damaged the lining of his bowel. How much bowel function he is able to recover we don't yet know. We are slowly stepping down the steroids and asking his bowel to do the work but if we manage to get completely off them remains yet to be seen.

But I am thinking ahead and want the best possible food for him, both for his health and for easy of picking up poos...

Aaaw bless him, poor thing! :(
In your position I'd try him on small amounts of cooked food once his health is on the up, do everything very very gradually with a view to eventually shifting him onto raw. Not an expert in anything though, just my own personal feeling.

Hope he's back to 100% soon, and he's a lucky boy to have such a lovely caring owner :)

Awww, thank you... he is a very very lovely boy. We adopted him from a greyhound rescue trust in August and he has already brought so much joy (and so much worry...)

Interesting timing as I'm trying to figure this out for our whippet right now. Would like to do frozen blocks but only have small (under counter) freezer, so almost imposs.

Anyone know which complete dry has small kibble? Pets at home give free 'trial bags' (2kg) for people to use when getting the right diet for their dog. Apparently you just have to speak to the on duty nutrition advisor. I'm going there tomorrow for a freebie!

Our chap seems to have settled down on Harringtons Turkey and Veg at the mo. We tried him on more expensive foods but this one just seemed to work.

We were also recommended Chappie (cheap n' cheerful) by the lady who owned the kennel we adopted him from. Not for him, but neither were the more expensive ones so I guess to a certain extent it's not about price but trial an error.

Our Airedale who suffered terribly from upset stomachs was 'fixed' by going onto dry Chappie, now all our dogs are on it and doing really well.

Hi, I know a lot of people don't approve of Chappie, but our previous dog had colitis and the vet actually advised us to feed her tinned Chappie. Within a couple of weeks her poohs changed from constant runny messes to being normal. She stayed on the Chappie for the rest of her life and it really did help her.

Bavarian - my friend said the same thing. Her whippet suffered from colitis and the vet told her that before the Royal Canin / Hills Prescription diets were invented vets would use tinned chappie as their recuperation food for dogs with digestive issues.