I am soooooo glad somebody else also raised this issue because I thought that I was crazy.
The symptoms that you are describing are almost exactly what my dog has started to experience once I started feeding her raw. The only exception is that she has no hair loss. She used to have a perfect long silky coat that would almost never mat. After switching her to raw, her coat started matting crazy. She also started having almost like a dandruff looking flakes on her tummy. Her eyes used to have no gunk, but after I switched her, they became significantly more watery.
With all that said, I really don't know what to do with her. She LOVES her raw food. She is seriously obsessed with it. I've never seen her being that crazy about her food.
The reason I switched her in the first place was because of her sensitive stomach. She used to be on California Natural for sensistive stomachs dry mixed in with Merrick canned food twice a day. She would have a variety of stools on this diet ranging from perfect to soft to a full blown diarrhea with a typical once a month accident of her throwing up. With all that, her coat and mood has always been fine on it.
I figured that people liked raw because it is allegedly better for dogs's sensitive stomachs to digest uncooked meat than the one cooked.
I read Dr. Pittcarn's book on dog's diet and he recomends an allergy diet there that consists of raw ground lamb or turkey and brown rice mixed in with Ca supplement, multivitamin and vitamin c powder. That's what I used to give her. She loved the taste. She was full of energy. Her stools improved dramatically. They were perfect. But.... her coat became a mess.
It is not as shiny and very matted. I brush her religiously every night and wash her every week with Cranberry Fields Oatmeal shampoo and conditioner. So, I don't think it causes any problem. I am actually positive that it does not because the routine has not changed in a while. Only diet did.
It almost seams to me that she started excreting something by her skin that causes her to mat more after I switched her diet.
So, now I don't know what to do. How can I have her stomach and her coat to be better at the same time.
Any thoughts? |