Hi everyone! I had introduced myself and posted pics of my babies on the getting to know you thread.
There is a lot of talk about dog food and as my babies have had problems I often wondered about the food they were getting. My Pepper is 15 years old and has heart failure. She also had a cough with occasional vomiting for the last couple of years that we attributed to her heart condition. Pepper also has a massive 'fat lump' on her one hind leg that causes walking problems. Sandy has hip dysplasia (sp?) and has one hip operated on. She also blew a knee and had reconstructive surgery on that knee. She also had frequent head shaking. The vet could not ever find anything 'wrong' with her ears. Recently Sandy developed several of these 'fat lumps' with an especially big one on her neck. We took her to our vet to have the lump examined, he drew some fluid and said 'yep, it's fat'. He offered no treatment. It was an 'oh, well' kind of thing. This lump continued to grow so we went to another vet for a second opinion. This vet examined every lump and drew fluid from them all. We had the same diagnosis. At this time the vet drew blood for testing as well. It turned out Sandy had very high steroid levels and this vet felt she had cushings.
I looked around at all the dogs I know and it seems almost everyone has some kind of problem, some big, some small. My elderly mom's dog had pancreatitis, a cough and bowel problems.
So, I thought what is the common denominator here? It seems to me it is commercial dog food. I got to looking at this closer. The ingredients are horrible! I needed a dog food for Pepper that had no salt because of her heart...and I could not find one.
We tried Orijen. Both dogs sleep in our room and on the Orijen, we truly needed gas masks! We tried Natural Balance & Canadae. There was no improvement.
I asked my vet about a raw diet and he hit the roof! He said that the best way to transfer disease from animal to animal is to feed raw meat. He said 'why do you think wild canine only live for 3 or 4 years. Made sense.
So, I switched my girls from commercial food to this:
store bought chicken, beef, liver. about 10 lbs, cut in chunks
long grain brown rice 3.5 liters of water, 2.5 liters rice
6 large carrots cut in chunks
bag frozen peas
cook it all together, add more water or rice to make sure you have a nice thick dog food
at meal time I give then a multivite, a fish oil pill cut and mixed with food and a glucosamine sulfate mixed with food.
That was about 3 weeks ago. Sandy's head shaking is gone. Pepper no longer coughs or vomits. Sandy's steroid levels after only 3 or 4 days have come down a bit. One lump disappeared that was in front of Sandy's hind leg. And the horrible gas is gone!
The second vet we saw was impressed. She said she wants Sandy on the new diet for three months and will retest her steroid level at that time.
I'm really hoping that this is on the right track and am wondering if anyone else has seen improvement on homemade food?
My elderly mom said when she was young they had a farm dog who lived on table scraps and lived to 17 years and was never sick....
Any thoughts on this would be most welcome. Thanks all!!!