Thanks for all the good ideas.
I've posted about it before, but another Spring, another complaint about Sam's skin and coat. Sigh... He was looking pretty awful about a month ago and I spent a lot more time brushing him this Spring. I think I got his entire undercoat, which seemed to help. He's already had a hotspot on his knee this year, but I caught it really early and it was gone withing two weeks on Dermaplast. I'm pretty much convinced it's environmental but perhaps there are some underlying issues that we cannot necessarily test for.
I am now rotating food between grain-free Fromm and grain-free PurVita. Also, I am trying to keep any sugars down. The PurVita Duck & Lentil is low in fruit and their carb is lentils. I have added a few items as well. One is MSM, which I added mostly for the low-cost health benefits for joints, but I hear it can help with other things. I'll keep both boys on that year-around. Sam's poop is ginormous and while solid, it's poofy, for lack of a better word. So, I am still thinking that one of his issues is the inability to efficiently absorb nutrients. Linus, on the other hand, eats the exact same things and the same amounts plus treats (which Sam gets also, just in lesser quantity) and his poo is small and hard (he is a slightly bigger dog, too).
I've started making bone broth for the boys, mostly Sam, but Linus gets it also. It's super easy and I've found that using chicken feet and the Instantpot results in the quickest and best batches. And, finally, I started adding raw fermented goat's milk to their kibble as well. It's too early to tell if there are benefits, but I have noticed that Sam is filling out a little and seems more active. I think Linus could thrive on dirt and grass, so he looks as good as always. I'm also back to feeding them both a raw egg most meals while my hens go nuts on the egg production front.
So, their meals look like this for anyone who is curious not only about what I am trying, but also, I got 25 lbs off of Linus and 35 lbs off of Sam and have maintained it for over a year:
1/2 cup kibble (the Fromm and PurVita are similar in calories)
1/3 cup bone broth (it's gelatinous)
1/3 cup raw goat milk (usually fermented but sometimes depends on what's in stock)
One raw chicken egg (no shell)
A handful of raw green beans or cauliflower (I get frozen packages or fresh if in season)
1 tsp of MSM
I also started making my own treats and rarely get store bought treats anymore. I came up with this recipe because I had a ton of eggs! Linus goes through a lot of them and I feed the scraps to both boys in their meals. The scraps are the edges or any crumbly bits. I also freeze packages for later. Sometimes, this is a scrap-fest from my fridge and cupboards!
Put at least six eggs in a blender and blend
Add one or more of the following: cooked meat (I typically have on hand: dark meat from baked chicken, boiled chicken gizzards or hearts, boiled meat from making bone broth), veggies (nothing too wet; I like to use kale), fruit (nothing too wet; I have found apples and bananas to be the best options), nuts or seeds, coconut (unsweetened) and blend some more
Add additional ingredients like tumeric, cinnamon, a touch of real vanilla, garlic, etc.
Add a few TB of coconut oil
Add tapioca flour (this will keep the treats from being crumbly; it gives them a bouncy feeling - if you don't care about crumbliness, skip this and add a little nut, oat or coconut flour instead - should be a runny hummus texture)
Blend until completely blended
Pour onto oiled wax paper in a dish - jelly roll pan or casserole dish
Bake at 350 for 15 minutes, check to see if center is firm, if not, bake in 5 minute increments until it is
Take out of oven and let cool
Throw in refrigerate for a couple hours or overnight
When cool, lift out of pan by wax paper and set upside down on cutting board, lift wax paper off
Cut in cubes; the edges are a little funky and this is what I feed to the dogs in their meals
A lot of times I make "flavored" treats (not that the dogs care) and have done banana nut (with vanilla, cinnamon and tumeric), apple bacon (just two strips of cooked bacon in a blender full of eggs and other stuff), chicken cheddar, Italian flavored (chicken, Italian seasoning, garlic, parmesan cheese) and beefy kale (boiled beef heart).
Keep refrigerated up to about a week. Can also freeze.
Thanks for all the good ideas.
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Kissing Bandit
That is the way we started on our road to feeding raw. You might find his skin issues would improve if you switched to raw. It sounds like Linus is doing ok on Kibble but I think if you switched both it would be easier and more cost effective. High quality kibble is expensive and raw if you plan ahead wouldn't be that much more. Ginormous poop sounds like Sam is not processing the kibble well and it's just passing through him.
We have already gone raw and while it did change the poop (more bone in general changes it - and I do continue to provide them with raw meaty bones once or twice a week) after 18 months nothing else changed, in fact, it continued getting worse.
His farting was better with raw and has gone away with the goat's milk.
As per Dr. Jean Dodds in private email to me, raw is just a stop gap to food intolerances. Raw has the antigens kibble does, just fewer. So it would take a longer time to build up to reaction or reaction might cease for a time.
I cannot find raw goat's milk. To be sold in a store it must be pasteurized and, incredibly, there seem to be no dairy goat farms in my big county. I'd like it for making Oban's kefir.
What were Sam's albumin levels like in his last blood work? I'm now on a Lymphangiectasia FB and albumin seems to be one of the keys to showing a gut issue.
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Castilleja's Dubhgall Oban, the Black Stranger of The Little Bay
Oct. 15, 2007 - June 13, 2021
Oxtongue Rapids Park. Oct. 2019 Hidden Content
The biggest help raw was for Sam was the weight loss and feeling full/satisfied. The raw is bulky, so I can see how it might be more filling versus kibble, which is fairly concentrated. I suppose the kibble expands in the belly... I don't know, just some thoughts.
The raw goat's milks is tough to find and in many places is it illegal to sell. In Portland you can get it from private dairies if it's marketed for soap making (I think). In Washington state, just 30 minutes from me, you can only buy goat milk from goats in Washington (or something like that) so they cannot sell the same brand that I get from the store (it's called "Answers" and I purchase it frozen in 1/2 gallon cartons). I don't know if it is helping, but I think it's amazing that he has totally stopped farting.
Not sure what Sam's albumin levels were, but the vet said his bloodwork was perfect in every way. I will probably get another set at his next vaccination visit since it's been a couple of years and he's still not completely healthy.
Snowshoe you are totally correct. Raw doesn't fix food intolerances. One of our Newfs is sensitive to turkey, white fish, and most all grains. We did the saliva test from Dr. Dodds and it was way faster than the elimination diet our Vet suggested.
We can get goats milk from a CO-OP that we belong to WAZZUOR LLC www.wazzuor.com They periodically offer frozen goats milk and we recently tried fermented fish stock from Answers and I think we could have gotten goats milk also. The CO-OP delivers from Northern WA down to the Portland area. Many times their prices are better than retail.
I did the saliva test too and and it said Oban's strongest intolerance was to turkey. What the heck? Turkey is the novel protein that saved him when he got so sick. That's why I contacted Hemopet and Dr. Dodds replied to me about the antigens. The test also showed sensitivities to foods I think he's never had. I would have said Oban's stomach was made of cast iron. We thought his allergies were seasonal environmental. But these things change and grow worse as per my readings so by doing the test I may have saved him some future anguish.
There is a big court case going on here about a co-op cow owning idea that allows people to get unpasteurized cow milk. Because of this I think even if I do find a dairy goat farm the owners of it are going to be very, very careful about who they might sell raw milk to, if they will at all. We drank unpasteurized milk when on the Grandparents' farm in summers. I guess it was ok but it was nearly always so fresh it was still warm. Yuck.
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Castilleja's Dubhgall Oban, the Black Stranger of The Little Bay
Oct. 15, 2007 - June 13, 2021
Oxtongue Rapids Park. Oct. 2019 Hidden Content
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