Originally Posted by Ladymom (Post 2432906)

Oh, gosh, I hope you don't have to start feeding a prescription diet. I went through that seven years ago when Lady was diagnosed with diabetes and my vet recommended Hills W/D. I fed it to her for about one month until I could do a little research. It made no sense to me why you would feed an immune compromised dog all that corn and peanut hulls. I am convinced that the reason Lady has outlived all the other dogs on the diabetes forum who were diagnosed at the same time is because I did not feed her prescription food.

I really hope Ellie's nutritionist can tweak her recipe so you can continue to homecook.

Originally Posted by amandawash (Post 2432938)

Goodness Crystal I hope you don't have to put her on that either!! I just looked at the can of I/D I had in the pantry for the last year and it has Ethoxyquin in it :eek: I hope they have changed that.

Marj- that is AMAZING that Lady has done so well on homecooked!! Like I said before if the raw ever didn't work for my boys I would go to homecooked so fast.

Originally Posted by Ellie May (Post 2432953)

I probably wouldn't use the I/D. Just picked that one in my post above because it is a common intestinal diet that seems to work very well (oddly enough). I was looking at the RC iintestinal but she had a horrible reaction to RC before. This one doesn't have corn though, only corn gluten meal.:rolleyes: From China I suppose... But what do you do if no diet is working and a dog can develop cancer if GI issues are left untreated? Maybe it's not diet related at all and then we won't even need to consider going to it but then what is causing the issue? I just hope it is IBD without a diagnosable cause. It does go with liver issues and pancreatitis and she has or has had both.

Originally Posted by amandawash (Post 2432992)

Crystal you are Ellie's angel. You have to feel like your stuck between a rock and a hard place. But like you said, what do you do? What exactly are her symptoms? Does she just general gastroenteritis-like symptoms or something else? PRAYING that it's just IBD, can she have any probiotics? For Ranger's bad tummy I use probios and really noticed a difference when I added the digestive enzymes to his diet as well. I know that is silly to try and compare those two but I have noticed a difference. Can she have digestive enzymes?

I hope your nutritionist can tweak her diet. What are you going to do when you get a healthy little baby far far down the road ;)

Originally Posted by Ladymom (Post 2433057)

I absolutely swear by Animal Essentials Plant Enzymes and Probiotics. Lady's pancreas does not function properly. She is diabetic and we think her HGE attacks were caused by her pancreas not digesting food properly and bacteria building up in her GI tract.

A combination of homecooking and AE probiotics and digestive enzymes have supported her pancreas almost unbelievably. No more diarrhea and her insulin requirement is half what it was seven years ago when she was first diagnosed. It's really astonishing.

Originally Posted by Ellie May (Post 2433012)

Yes, she can have probiotics. Due to the fact that so many companies put anything they want to on the market and it may not be as potent as thye say, I have decided to go with Proviable by Nutramax. Nutramax is a great company- I think it's a great idea to get her on the probios. You may be surprised and that's all she needs. I hope the sample size is large enough for you to test for at least 2 weeks, because serious cases can take several weeks for the probios to actually start doing their thing. I would give her a month on it before you decided if they are doing anything or not. If you end up buy the bottle and don't like them, let me know and I will buy the rest from you. With Ranger we can't have too many on hand and I am really leaning towards using those as opposed to the probiocyn that we use for emergencies. Her vet agrees. I did not want to buy a bottle of 80, so I am waiting for a sample. It will be here soon. She can have digestive enzymes but I'm skeptical about those to say the least. The ones that really work for EPI are the only ones that I would trust and a dog without EPI shouldn't need them. The plant based over-the-counter type...I just don't know. Her pancreas should be producing 70 times more enzymes than it needs to to digest a meal, so just not convinced that enzymes are necessary. However, I would consider them if nothing else is working.

She has had soft stool (started out as very loose stool) since October. It is on again off again. The Metronidazole worked the first time but after stopping, the problem came back. Went back on Metro for a month and the issue never really did clear up again that whole time. It is tolerable now and I would just let it go but this can't be healthy for her. That's a hard call to make isn't it? I know you don't want to put anything more artificial into her little body than necessary and I wouldn't want to do months of metro. I hope those probios can give her some relief.

And she is scratching again (allergies) but it is hard to pinpoint what food is causing it because one of her allergens (corn) is in so many things (Cheerios, popcorn, etc.) and gets dropped easily for her to eat. :( So I don't know if the food she is on now is making her itch or the food that gets dropped that she isn't supposed to have. You know, like the one piece of popcorn that falls by the garbage can type thing.:rolleyes: I would guess she's just developing sensitivities to different foods at this point due to her immune system, as it is surely compromised due to her issues. Consulted with DH who said her system is probably "a little batty right now" (excuse the vet terms :D) and is just over-reacting to everything due to the fact there is probably something else going on.

I don't know. If it isn't liquidy but just very soft too often, do you just let it go? I don't know! I guess if the probios don't help, then I would be more in favor of doing a diet re-formulation before I did a biopsy. After the probiotics, I will talk to her vet again but while she is in complete support of diet change, probiotics, etc., she is thinking that a full thickness intestinal biopsy followed by prednisolone I would think pred would be REALLY hard on her little body. But I understand it might be the only optionmay be the only thing to work if all of this other stuff doesn't. She can't really give those meds without doing a biopsy first to rule out cancer... Whatcha think? Is her bloodwork completely normal (for her)?

Ann and I have been talking about this too.
We were thinking maybe EPI? But Ellie is now gaining weight, so not sure if that is possible. Or possible SIBO.

Originally Posted by amandawash (Post 2433090)

I don't know... EPI doesn't sound likely due to the fact she is not emaciated and like you said, gaining weight. I would more so think it could be SIBO secondary to due to her dietary sensitivity and intestinal issues.

How freakin' WIERD is it that she may have one of two issues that are most common in German Shephards!!! Are you sure there isn't any GSD in there :rolleyes: BTW- how old is she exactly?

Originally Posted by marcerella02 (Post 2433075)

I use their multivitamin- it's great.

Originally Posted by Ellie May (Post 2433152)

Nope, not a bit of shephard in her. ;)
She is seven.
I know her symptoms don't sound like EPI but she had acute pancreatitis last year and now this, so it seems like something is thrown off although her Spec cPL is normal. Something on her blood work was one point high. Hmm, I think it was hemoglobin. The vet said no worries. Her platelets were very low (out of reference range) but we redid it and they were right back up (clotting in the tube suspected). The hemo was normal then too I believe. Her lipase was about 200 points too high. This was in Oct. Then the cPL came back normal. Nutramax is sending an 80 day sample to the vet and she says they are all mine if I want them. :)

Lol, I agree. Her system is quite batty.
Please tell your husband thanks.

Originally Posted by Ellie May (Post 2432860)

Right now Ellie does get homecooked (of course) but because of some medical issues, there may be a time very soon that we might have to go with a prescription diet.:mad: It is just really hard to mirror the intestinal diets like I/D, so we will see. It is very expensive compared to kibble and the better ingredients do cost quite a bit more. When you measure everything out to get the correct % of protein, fat, etc., it can be time consuming to package it.

Not sure what I'd do with a healthy Yorkie but a healthy large dog would be getting dog food. However, I take one issue or another with just about every dog food out there and I would not like feeding it.:(