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Originally Posted by Ellie May  It takes 3 weeks of trying a food to know if it's going to help at all. Of course if they get really sick on it, you can't wait that long. Sometimes GI upset around a food change works itself out...
Have you tried mixing the canned lamb with the old food that she didn't like?
Tried a lamb and no grain kibble?
How about feeding the chicken and rice or lamb canned. After a few days and as long as she is doing well, slowly add in the original kibble or a lamb based kibble. Wait a few weeks, make sure she is doing well, and then slowly add raw. Generally, it looks like some of the foods that she doesn't do great on are "high end, holistic". Not all dogs do. Perhaps it's just an ingredient intolerance, but it could also be the make up of these foods. they tend to be a bit higher in protein and/or fat. People could debate all day about how this isn't true or how they are dogs, so they should be able to handle it, but it's very obvious that some Yorkies can't. The last thing you want to do is be so concerned about feeding the best food, that the GI tract is constantly angry, and then other problems will result (including possibly pancreatitis).
Go slow.
Put her on what you know works (as long as she is pretty much done growing, she can probably go a couple-few weeks unbalanced - but the lamb sounds like it will work anyway), then slowly transition to another kibble. But a tiny amount of loose stool isn't that uncommon. |
I would keep her on whatever "new food" for a while and I actually did use the NV Prairie Chicken (with grains) for about 2 weeks or so - no diarrhea, but the huge really soft poops 4-5x a day did continue the whole time, so that's why I figured she needed grain free, but you're right - most of the grain-free foods are pretty high in protien and especially fat.
The others recently actually gave her liquidy poops to the point of it truely being diarrhea and once there was even a tinge of red in there, so that was obviously severe enough for me to stop immediatly.
The old food that she stopped eat and had pretty normal poops on (they were at least form and somewhat firm) was the Orijen, but that's the one that gave her bad gas (no gas since she stopping eating that and I stopped giving it). I DID try it once though again - after the raw beef diarrhea cleared up with the chicken and rice combo - I had the same thought - go back to the Orijen - well, that was when she had the diarrhea with the one drop of bright red blood in it.
She just had another bout of liquidy diarrhea just a few minutes ago.
I'm not concerened that she has an actuall problem right now that would need the vet (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) only because when this happened before and I gave the chicken and rice, she was perfectly fine in less than 24 hrs. and she doesn't seem effected otherwise (good appetite, playing, happy etc.).
Yes, everything I've tried so far is high end holistic. The original Verus (which she wouldn't eat) is not quite as "high end", but still holistic.
I'm going to go strictly chicken and rice for a few days (she's 7 months old only, so I'm afraid to go too many days without something balanced) then start incorperating the canned grain free lamb back in. Then I'll try a grain-free lamb formula kibble, but only a few pices per day mixed in (the 2 I'm looking at - NV
limited ingredient lamb grain-free or nature's logic lamb -only grain is millet). If she does well on the lamb formulas, how do you feel about sticking with only lamb as her protien source? I could add some boiled chicken in there every few days too since that goes over fine.
Well, if she still doesn't do well on lower fat/protien lamb kibble I'll just have to stick with the canned and raw lamb and ax kibble all together?, Especially the limited ingredient one (I believe that one is 22% protien and 16% fat - the other lamb one I didn't try yet is 30% protien and 15% fat) - the others I've tried are definatly higher - about 40% protien and 20-22% fat - hmmmm maybe that is the problem?
*sigh* I'm sorry Crystal, I probably just confused the heck out of you LOL. I wish vets were more help in this area - I suppose I can look into seeing if I can afford a consult with a nutritionist over the phone or web (there's none local).
Thanks for the advise, that helped get me thinking in the right direction.
