Change food? Again? Very Loose stools

[IchLiebeDeutscheSchaferhunde]

Would like your thoughts please.

Rescue GSD, owned for 4 months.
Arrived on a low protein chicken kibble, had good first poo, and then loose rest of time.

Vet recommended no chicken as common GSD intolerance - so slowly moved over to a 26% protein duck and salmon 'sensitive' kibble.

No real difference to begin with but now 2 months into full new food it is definitely worse. No nicely formed poo, but not diarrhea as such because no urgency, just goes on walks a normal amount - just very loose.

Vet prescribed probiotics, still no better, so now considering another food change.

Dog has been wormed, if anything probably worse since the worming - normally the poo doesn't smell offensive (been a little since the probiotic) and no blood not watery, last test sample showed no reason for it. (no history, but not likely to be an import dog)

I am his only source of food.

I don't wish to do raw (until we have tried other options)

Would love your thoughts.

My Labrador was similar. It was chicken in his case and he's been on salmon and rice kibble for most of the time we've had him. I had to swap to Field and Trial as our local farm shop went out of business, along with their contract with another manufacturer. He's been been fine.

We have to give our dog grain free food otherwise he gets urgent Mr Whippie type stools. Is there grain in your dog's current kibble?

One of my rescues is sensitive to chicken, duck and turkey. I think basically all birds.

Something that really helped firm up poos is iKarmel Doggy Dailies Gland-Eze (or No Scoot). It's a chew that I give all 4 of my rescues and it has really helped them all. It's mostly pumpkin powder, fibre and probiotics. (Don't shoot me, but ACV is a minor ingredient!) It does contain Chicken Liver Powder, which I hadn't noticed before, but my dog tolerates it well.

https://amzn.eu/d/c0afcoQ

Otherwise a 500mg - 800mg psyllium husk capsule daily was great and very effective, but the chew is a lot easier to administer as they love the taste.

That is chicken though? My dog cannot tolerate chicken.

I realise your question is to the OP @VanGoSunflowers , not the wider forum, but I just want to say that once you start researching ingredients, you end up going down a rabbit hole. I know @SpanielsGalore feels the same and has also done extensive research.

If you look at the ingredients of a superfood type kibble that is high in fresh meat - Millies Wolfheart or even the lower priced Jollyes Lifestage, compared to a brand like Purina or Skinners you see that the latter are very high in soya, maize, wheat, contain meat meal with a very minimal percentage of fresh meat and are heavy in fillers like beet pulp. The difference isn't just about grain/grain free but about finding a healthier diet with a better kibble that is higher in fresh meat, or switching to raw feeding or giving a mix of both.

Some dogs can tolerate grains reasonably well and there is also a theory about increased risk of DCM in grain free foods that are high in pea proteins. So not everybody agrees that grain free is necessarily the way to go. As with everything, it's about finding a balance and feeling your way as to what is the right choice for your dog. Our previous boy was grain free because of itchy skin/hotspots, current girl has some with grain, some without, a mix of wet and dry.

I apologise @Stripeysockspots , I missed that.
We don't feed chicken, turkey or pork.

We had similar with our boy. Came from the breeder with a certain food but almost immediately with runny poos. We tried different brands, with no improvement, he also didn't seem to want to eat them. Eventually tried raw and it was much better for about 6 months, then he refused the food and had slop poos again. Eventually we had him allergy tested and he was sensitive to a vast number of different foods. At this point the vet suggested Royal Canin veterinary hypoallergenic, which was a bit of a shock after raw. We gave it a go thinking that he hates kibble, but that was 5 years ago and he's been great on it ever since. Solid poos, eats his meals and with the occasional few days of slop again, usually coinciding with him finding something unmentionable on a walk!

The hypoallergenic kibble basically has none of the allergens contained within it as they've been processed out effectively. Not what I would have chosen but it works.

@FinallyMovingHouse I had a dog with multiple allergies and IBD. The hypoallergenic foods were the only ones he could tolerate. As you say, it's crap quality, expensive food that I wouldn't choose, but it worked for him.

Apologies then @businessflop25 I just see flags when anyone recommends ACV, they tend to be fully signed up to the science is bad, information on Facebook is good and think everything from cuts to cancer can be solved by ACV.

Thanks all.

I went to Jolleys today, pulled out all the lamb flavours to look for protein content/ingredients, they didn't have any of the life stages lamb but that will be in on Monday.

The staff member was helpful, and mentioned protein content, the food I am feeding at the moment is 26% protein, she said if he was fed low protein in the past it might be this that is causing the issue- has anyone else found that?

I have ordered MW trial

@taxidriver chappie was always the go to dog food when poorly, I'm just concerned about keeping adding in new things.

@CoubousAndTourmalet thank you for that! I have indeed gone down a rabbit hole this morning looking at different types of food! Wow, mind blown 😂
I think I would like to switch his kibble, but I’m worried about picking the ‘wrong’ one and creating problems we don’t already have. He doesn’t have any issues with his current food but I don’t think it’s very high quality compared to some of the others I have seen (he’s on Burns puppy chicken and rice at the instruction of the breeder)

I was looking at this one:

https://wildpetfood.co.uk/products/chicken-80-20-cold-pressed-dry-dog-food

But I can’t understand the feeding chart for puppies as the weight says “expected dog weight” which makes no sense as if I went by that, he’d be eating more each day now than when he is an adult. He’s 4 months and 10kgs

What do you expect your dog to weigh as an adult? Is he a cocker, expected to be 15kg as an adult, for example?

I have found feeding guidelines awful. I now work it out on calories. My working cocker is very active and needs 3x some of the recommended food allowance in terms of kcals.

If he's likely to weigh up to 25kg as an adult, you would feed 260 - 300g until he is 6 months. I've attached the guide with a crude arrow showing the relevant column.

If expected to be over 25kg as an adult, it would be the next column along, showing 450- 490g until 6 months.

@VanGoSunflowers Personally I feed grain free foods, as grains are fillers offering no nutritional value.
Puppies do need more of some foods, as they need the extra nutrients to help their growth. I hate foods that go on expected adult weight. Unless you know the size of both parents, it can vary greatly. Even then, my friend's dog is 9kg and her litter mate is 16kg. I guess you go on breed average for a lab and then adjust for body score.

That Wild food is highly rated. (And highly expensive!) This is one of the problems with the AADF website. Any food with a high meat content gets a high rating. However, I am not convinced the average pet dog needs a food with 52% protein content. He may be fine on it. Or he may be bouncing off the walls. Or it turns to fat because it's not getting used up.

I don't use the guidelines either, but can understand why people do. I have 4 rescue dogs who eat freely, controversial I know, but some had been neglected and previous food scarcity created some resource guarding issues. They are all slim, healthy weights, so it works for us. Luckily they aren't labs who are constantly ravenous!

I have a greyhound with a very sensitive stomach. Took us a while to find something that didn’t result in the most noxious farts and loose stools but we settled on burns pork and apple sensitive (it worked out better than a lot of the more expensive brands) and he gets a tin of sardines in sunflower oil every day too. If we deviate from that it’s back to getting gassed in our beds at night.

Also, yes, puppies will need more calories while young as they are usually such high energy and growing so rapidly.

Right ok, I think I was being a bit dim then in that case. If I expect him to be 25kgs when he is an adult, then I would feed him 300g a day until he is one but then go down to 280g ish when is fully grown. I think I expected him to gradually work up to more kibble a day when he is fully grown and not less but the difference at 20g is pretty negligible

All questions I was asking myself this morning when I was googling 😂 is it really necessary for him to have that much protein and would switching from what I am feeding him now which is much lower in protein to the one I linked, even when done gradually, would it end up causing more problems than it solves. So would I be better getting a grain-free food with a higher protein than burns but a lower protein than Wild

Aaaaand here comes the head hurts 😂

I personally love DARF. It's similar to WILD, but I think 60% protein and contains 5% millet for grain. I'm attaching a snapshot of the nutritional info from their regular mixed flavour, but there are other varieties too.

In fact, all of the foods from Sabre Pet Foods are great. We feed a variety of foods (4 free feeding rescues), so they have an option of 2 or 3 foods available. Alpha Spirit is a lovely range of foods from Sabre too. They are a slightly softer, semi-moist texture than the cold-pressed DARF range.

A number of the working dogs (cockers and labs) in my rural village eat DARF too, so we're in good company.

@VanGoSunflowers I've been there. 🙈
My three were all on different foods. I spent more hours than I care to admit researching foods to find one that would be suitable for all of them.
I looked at 13 brands. Made a spreadsheet with the cost of the food, price per 100gms, amount of food for a 10 kg dog, cost per day to feed, AADF rating.
If it's any help, in the end I decided on Country Kibble and they are all doing well on it.
I know @CoubousAndTourmalet feeds Lifestages, which is very similar to CK. And a lot of people swear by Millies Wolfheart.
Good luck in your search. 😁

I also didn't want to go raw so moved on to cold pressed for my Shepherds, using Markus Muhle (zooplus), was great to take on walks too as treats. We had to be really careful to avoid chicken, it's in so many treats even if they aren't chicken flavour.

A previous shepherd had colitis and did really well on 'growling tums'.

When they are young I've found they have always been loose on puppy /junior food so used treebarks powder or more recently pumpkin powder to firm things up.

I have another breed now and it's lovely to be able to feed anything 🤣

Ok, I have to admit that I wasn't keen on Millies Wolfheart.

I bought 2 or 3 samples and my dogs loved them, but one more than the others. OMG, even I admit that they smelled amazing with lovely botanical ingredients!

So, bigger bag duly purchased of the one they loved the most. But it wasn't the same! The smell was different, just a regular dog food smell and the dogs really weren't fussed. I thought I'd ordered the wrong one, so ordered big bags of the other two, as I wasn't sure which was the heavenly food. Again, they were not the same as the samples.

Don't get me wrong, they ate it, but the samples were very misleading and the dogs didn't react the same way to the regular bags. I don't know if the samples were fresher stock or a different recipe, but it wasn't worth it for me.