Does anyone have a dog with digestive issues?

[CrapBag76]

8 month old puppy. His digestion has never been great, poo has always been soft, though not runny. He’s also very pukey.

Have tried all different brand of kibble and wet food, have tried grain free and grained, he has lickimats with natural yoghurt and peanut butter. Have also tried bland diets of plain rice and chicken, salmon, tuna in spring water etc. All sorts of things he eats have been eliminated one at a time over the last few months with no changes.

He probably had the best poo on taste of the wild high prairie kibble, though his farts were absolutely vile. He was still pukey though.

We have spent $2500 this week on investigations and blood tests and an ultrasound, as his poo was exceptionally runny, with still no clues. The vet has put him on royal Canin gastrointestinal for now, though I’ve always been a bit dubious about RC products and how much vets up sell them but nothing left to lose at this point.

Does anyone else’s dog just have a naturally dodgy tummy?! Is there something I’m missing?! I’m going broke between vets and trying new foods.

I would try raw .

Have you tried chappie? Our vet always used to recommend it and we put our spaniel on it years ago, it sorted her out. Cheap too!

The only way identify a food intolerance is to start with a proper anallergenic food from one of the big veterinary brands and feed this exclusively for a number of weeks. Then gradually move to hypoallergenic if no issues and gradually introduce new things. Lots of brands say they are hypoallergenic but they are not really, just made with stuff that's less likely to cause an upset in most dogs (e.g
white fish).

In dogs, food intolerance is caused by proteins - in anallergenic/hypoallergenic foods, the proteins are so small the body doesn't recognize them as proteins (the former being the smallest, hence why you start with that and move to bigger proteins over time). Feeding a bland diet of rice/chicken would not help with a real food allergy - your dog might be allergic to the proteins in chicken, after all! .

Royal canin have a good explanation of how/why all this works on their website. The science behind it is really clever! I'm a bit surprised the vet has agreed to put your pup through all that expensive physical exam without a proper food trial first. Our vet point blank refused to do anything until the food trial was complete. Good luck!

We have an 8 year old Frenchie with a dodgy tummy. Most upsets, I think, are caused by what she eats while we are out on our walks. She loves fox poo and cat poo and despite my best efforts she always manages to find some. She did OK on RC Bulldog, it certainly improved her farting but she still had squishy pale poo a lot of the time. But our local small pet shop suggested Tribal, I haven't seen it anywhere else, but since she has been on Tribal she has been much much better and her poo is a better colour and consistently 😱

I would agree with the comments about not swapping so often, you do need to give it a few weeks to settle down.

I use a bowl with three prong things in it to slow her eating down, and I also found 3 smaller meals helped, rather than two larger ones. Less to digest.

We had the same problem with our little guy and it took so much trial and error until we finally found a brand of food called 'Pooch and Mutt', its a little bit more expensive than the other dry nuts but it works absolute wonders!! His poo went from constantly watery/runny diarrhea to completely normal poo within the first week of him eating it! They also do their own puppy treats and they work perfectly whilst not upsetting his stomach. Any other treats completely ruin his tummy. I'd definitely recommend it!

I disagree they can be allergic to grains and cereals too which a lot of the big vet recommend brands like royal canin have, I really wouldn’t listen to Royal canin tbh.

going on a website like all about dog food is good to compare different food ingredients.

you want easily digestible ingredients this is why raw is really good for sensitivity

If our dog had been fed raw he would have died. All my other dogs were. He could not digest raw food at all. He lost 7 kg in 2 weeks on a raw food diet

The only food that worked for him and kept him alive was hydrolyzed dog food.

Not sure if this will help at all but my dog's tummy was always a bit dodgy. Eventually tried Virbac Gastro Digestive Support which worked well for him so much so that he is now on their 'ordinary' food and has never looked better.
He has a wheat intolerance which means that many treats are off limits but it's otherwise easy to manage.
Grain free foods (which I thought were best until the heart concerns info emerged) always upset his tummy for some reason - I think the fillers such as peas and potatoes were not good for him.

if dogs are extra sensitive to certain proteins and on a raw diet then they would lose weight, i had a dog that was the same and changed the food to a low fat easy digestible raw which was natural instinct special diet, what type did you try out of interest?

sometimes dogs are allergic to certain proteins most commonly chicken

Yes - it took two years and no tests ever established the issue. They were convinced it was allergy related. Placed by vet hospital on specialist diet, however our dog became iller and weaker as eventually just did not want to eat the food. It's not true in all cases when they say a dog will eventually eat if hungry. In desperation as she was losing weight and had no list for life we put her on to a commercial brand which had similar characteristics to the specialist diet along with the psyllium husk recommended by the hospital. We tried all protein variants of this food with the psyllium husk combination and 18 months later not had one single dietary issue. It turned out after discussing with vets that we had established ourselves she had fibre responsive chronic enteropathy. No protein allergy at all. It's a complex area to navigate and we were just lucky. Hope you get answers soon.

We had very similar problems with our dog, constantly upset/unsettled tummy whatever we tried. Eventually I became so worried that she was not thriving that I had a consultation with a dog nutritionist. He was very thorough and very knowledgable. Eventually he persuaded me to try her on raw. This was never something I wanted to do (as I told him when I first contacted him) for lots of practical reasons as well as because our vet had told me a number of times that she would not be able to cope with raw food, and she should be on the RC specialist diet. I was so desperate however that I decided to try it. Within a couple of days it had completely transformed her digestion and overall health. She now always has tiny hard poos, has put on weight and has become happier, glossier and more playful. She has not had any stomach upset or even a single squidgy poo since. Obviously I can’t say this would work for every dog, but for us it has been truly transformational.

My dog has the doggie equivalent of crohn's disease in his early years. Took us years of diet/tests to get it under control. He's on Royal Canin prescription dog food and he loves it, its specifically formulated for dogs with stomach issues. He's also on medication to control nausea and inflammation.
Chicken is one of the worst meats to give a dog. If you need to try a bland diet use turkey.

Trust me my dog was not allergic to certain proteins but all proteins. If a dog has any form of intestinal disease telling owners to fed raw is incorrect. It is unlikely to be tolerated. This is a medical issue not just an intolerance to certain foods.

I am an experienced dog owner and have been feeding most of my dogs raw for many many years.

He passed blood and vomited blood - he was not just losing weight he had internal bleeding and hydrolyzed food was the only food he could digest.

Interestingly being a fan of raw feeding and the health benefits of it I was concerned re the ingredients in the hydrolyzed food. However he was fine and as a Labrador lived to 16 years old!

@Rhino94 proper (veterinarian accredited) anallergenic food does not contain grain, although many of the cheaper brands advertised as "hypoallergenic" do. I've been through all this and back with my own dog.

@ShouldIknowthisalready explains the protein issue better than I did - it is the fact the proteins are hydrolyzed that matters. These foods have been specifically developed for food intolerances/elimination diets and are the only way to accurately and safely identify triggers. It is peer reviewed science.

When you say veterinary accredited, which ones do you mean?

An example of Hydrolyzed food would be Purina Ha.

I disagree with TheChestertons and some hydrolyzed dog food does have grain but it will be hydrolyzed eg corn

So difficult isn't it? Could you have him on the gastrointestinal stuff for a a week or two or as long as it takes to really let things settle and then very, very slowly reintroduce a new food. My dog is on Millie's Wolfheart utility mix (fish based), protein is 50% I think. If you're going from Royal Canin then don't jump up to a really high protein food as that could be difficult to digest. I know that the Hills food has a very low meat content (9%) yet the vets recommend it?! So just watch you're not switching to anything really high if RC is low too.

the vets recommend hills because unfortunately the little training they have in nutrition is usually through hills/rc reps!

I think this is so unfair on the vets. Vets are intelligent humans who want to help dogs. They are able to google as well as you are re dog nutrition.

Prescription diet does have a place for some animals and it is unfair to blame or berate vets for having medical knowledge and wanting to help cure dogs issues

As owners we can also research the food and the final decision lies with us.

@ShouldIknowthisalready I agree with you and the vets I have spoken to have certainly offered good advice regarding food. I was just surprised that when I was researching dog food that the Hills one had such a low meat content. My dog loved it though!

Not berating vets at all they are amazing at what they do I’m just stating why they would recommend hills, most of the vets I’ve experience have advised against raw which in my experience and many others has helped with a lot of issues.

To add if you went on all about dog food it actually has ratings and articles on prescription diets

Allaboutdogfood founder is a zoologist and then worked for a pet food company. He has no actual qualification in nutrition.

The ratings on allaboutdogfood will always be higher for a higher meat content diet.

This may be right for some dogs but not for all.

It is also funded by ads from pet food company - this is what many people blame the vets for.....

As I have said I am a raw feeder but we all need to keep an open mind that some dogs needs different diets. There is no one diet fits all on dogs,

We tried what felt like all the kibble in the world to our lab, but nothing agreed with him. High protein expensive stuff, cheap stuff, special digestive issues stuff, all resulted in diarrhea. We tried Butternut box after a recommendation from a friend, and it solved the problems almost instantly. Now we can get away with a mix of kibble and Butternut box and keep good poos. If you've only tried processed stuff, I'd try Butternut box or raw (Butternut box is essentially cooked meat, so similar to raw). The difference is amazing.

We do now, apparently. This lad came home from the shelter just a couple of weeks ago, and we changed his food as he was underweight with a poor coat. His coat looks a lot better and he's gained some nice muscle around the shoulders particularly, but unfortunately now he's started with messy poop with a little bit of fresh blood when he strains hard. He cries when he strains to poop so his bottom is obviously sore. He does let us put sudocrem on it which gives him a lot of relief. We've put him back on the original food and today he's going to our vet for the first time (he'd only seen the shelter vet previously) so will get some advice on that as well as a general checkup. I can see his stomach is going to be problematic. Though part of the trouble is that he was on the streets and consueqently puts everything in his mouth to see if its edible, including small stones.