Nose licking and flatulence all/every evening

[Acacia123]

So we have 6 year old JRT in good health - she spends all evening licking her nose repeatedly. She also has terrible flatulence. These are not new issues and commence about 2 hours after she has her dinner. Do you think this could be digestive discomfort (causing stress and therefore nose licking)? We wonder if she might be intolerant to a food ingredient. She has Lidls dried food (sometimes with a spoonful of meat or fish scraps leftover from our dinner) - can anyone recommend a good quality easily digested alternative we could try....I am really not sure what ingredients are good and what we should avoid.

Millies wolfheart food.
Doesn't have any crap in it. You can use their questionnaire to see what food they recommend based on type, size, age and exercise level.

On their website obvs!

Great, thanks, will take a look!

Have a look at All About Dogfood for recommendations.
It certainly sounds like she has digestive issues.

My dog has improved since being on Chappie. It works for him

“Do you think this could be digestive discomfort (causing stress and therefore nose licking)?”

They also lick when they feel nauseous... so yep, I’d think they’re linked tbh.

I would stop scraps for now - lots of dogs are intolerant to human foods (not necessarily the meat or fish, but the other ingredients we often add to our meals).

Then slowly transfer him into a decent food. Lidl dry dog food ranks as one of the worst out there - it's primary ingredient is cereals and it has just 4% meat derivatives.

Depending on your budget you could try Wainwright's from Pets at Home - good quality for a fairly decent price. Otherwise there is James Wellbeloved, Lily's Kitchen, Crave and Millie's Wolfheart. As a general rule I would avoid multi-coloured kibble as it tends to mean it has added colouring and flavouring in it.

Food will be playing a huge part - you would have issues if you ate McDs at every meal. Crap in crap out as they say.

If you look at the Allaboutdogfood site recommended above Lidl food has a very poor nutritional rating of 6%. At £5 something for a 10kg bag, not unexpected!

You need to get her onto a decent food for nutrition, but also might take a bit of time trying different foods to see what suits her.

We also use millies wolfheart, it is expensive but a bag lasts a long time as it is high protein so you feed less. Try small packs until you find the right one, our dog does well (doesn't fart/has firm small poos which are easy to pick up!) on Countryside, Salmon and Veg, Highland mix, but farts like a trooper on Riverside or anything with trout/white fish. Cut out all additional treats until settled on new food and then introduce slowly to find out what she can tolerate.

Okay, thanks all, sounds like a good plan!

I fed my dog (at rescue place's vet's advice) on high meat content (Rocco) wet food. She had bouts of diarrhoea after being on it for some months and local vet suggested she might be allergic to one of the meats in the wet food (we had various flavours). I changed her to grain-free dry and wet food and we've never looked back. She has Harrison's and James Wellbeloved (this is the one she likes better) grain-free dry foods (various flavours) and James Wellbeloved grain-free wet food sachets (comes in 2 flavours). It is expensive but Joyfuldog is absolutely thriving on it. I buy all this online.

When I was 11, I was given my first dog - a Staffie and we fed him raw food. He had TERRIBLE flatulence all his life and the vet said that was common in Staffies. It has taken me until now, when I have another Staffie to realise this is totally untrue - it is all down to the food. I am appalled when I think what an uncomfortable tummy my poor old Staffie must have been suffering through our ignorance at the time.

So when swapping food I plan to do so very gradually - she currently has eg x4 small scoops/spoons and I plan to drop that to 3 plus one of the new food (for maybe 4 days) and then half and half for another couple of days etc etc does that sound about right?

I would try it like this:

Day 1 - 90% old food, 10% new food.

Then each day, increase the amount of new food by 5-10% each time. Aim to be at 50% old/new after a week. I have a dog that can handle immediate switches of food but as yours is already showing signs of nausea, I would do it as slowly as possible!

What food are you trying him on? Fingers crossed it works!

Be aware you will be feeding much less with a high protein food which had less fillers in it. Our 34kg labrador only gets 1/2 cup twice a day (and could still do with losing 2kg!).

The only food that doesn’t give my terrier awful wind is Lilly’s Kitchen.