My 3 1/2 year old lab Joey has had alot of stomach problems. When I fists got him I fed him Nutro Lamb & Rice (the breeder recommended it). His stools were always very mushy & stinky. He had bad gas & scooted alot. He also got bad yeast infections in his ears. I took him to the vet and she suggested he probably had a food allergy. She recommended that I feed him Medi Cal duck & potato.

He did do alot better on this. His ears more or less cleared up, and his diarrhea got a little better, but he still was certainly not perfect. The vet then suggetsed I try the Eukanuba Veterinary Diets Respone FP (Fish & Potato). He has done even better on this, although still not perfect.

I went away for a few weeks and left him with a family member to look after. When I got back the dog was very sick. He would not eat, had explosive diarrhea that had blood in it. I took him to the vet. Had a big cancer scare, but after a lot of tests he was diagnosed with inflammatory bowel. We treated him with Prednisone & Tylan powder. Turns out while I was away the kids were feeding him all sorts of stuff his stomach can't take.

I am still feeding him the Eukanuba Respone FP and he gats a 1/2 teaspoon of Tylan powder every other day and is doing quite well (he is off the Prednisone). After reading info on this board I discover that fish meal in dog food is preserved with Ethoxyquin (I don't know what that is but it doesn't sound very good). I am wondering if anyone might have another recommendation or if I should just stick with the Eukanuba. On the package it does say for intermittent feeding only, but when I asked the vet she said not to worry about that. Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

Have you ever considered going to a home made natural diet. Then you control what your dog is eating, it does take some time and research and it is a commitment but once you get going you will see the benefits for your dog and the problems you describe will clear up. Just a note many traditional vets are very opposed to this but when you start to see what is done and put in commercial food it is really disgusting. Anyway BC does have a good network for this and I will give you a link to look at and will give you many contacts for info.
http://www.lepus.reach.net/NRS.html

Labracorn,

I went to that web site and there's a lot. I'm looking forward to disecting it more later. Thank you.

My question is what do you mean by a natural diet - do you mean a raw diet? What was your information source you used to find the ingredients, etc.?

Yes we feed raw. There are some that do well on cooked but the main idea behind this is NO commercially prepared food. We started after hubby attended BARF seminar by Billinghurst so we started there but as time has gone on we have modified the diet to what our boys do well on. Another good book is by Kymythy Schultze she is a nutritionalist and raises newf's and has done so for 15 + yrs with great success.

Thank you for the great info. I had been wondering about a homemade diet but did'nt really know where to start. I'll have to take a good look through all the info. What do you find your dogs do best on. Do you buy the food already made, or do you make it yourself?

http://www.auntjeni.com/barf.htm
http://www.touchmoon.com/dotters/raw/index.shtml

These are some sites with pictures that may give you an idea of what we are doing. Again you sort of customize it to your dogs once they are detoxed off of kibble you can make changes when you see how your dog responds to the food. Our major meat is chicken but the boys love fish so they get that about 3 meals a week.