Great Pyrenees needs to gain weight

[Shanantina]

I have a Great Pyrenees and he needs to gain weight, he's only 107 lbs! We are limited food choices as he has many allergies. He's allergic to Maple/Elder, Hazelnut, Soybean, Milk, Rice, Turkey, White Potato, Carrots, and Peas. He's also border line with allergies on Chicken. - How can we help him gain weight?

[My Lodi Girl]

I also have a couple of dogs with allergies. I feed them Hills Prescription Diet Z/D Gold. It is a hypoallergenic dog food and has done wonders for my dogs. Lodi had such bad allergies that we were at the last resort of giving her steroids on a daily basis which I did not want to do. Have you tried giving him canned food? I believe Z/D comes in cans also. Also, pig ears are very high fat. My dogs always had the opposite problem, they needed to lose weight so I had to quit giving them pig ears. I know you can't feed him just pig ears but as a nightly treat, may help. Good luck!

[Chaser]

Wow that is TOUGH!

The protein and rice allergy would be easy enough to work around, but all the good foods like Orijen 6 Fish or Acana Grasslands (Lamb) have potato in them! What on earth is he eating now?

Anyway, you could try supplementing his diet with "Satin Balls" - here's a link to one recipe, though there are lots of variations that you can search for and alter them to suit your needs and accomodate his allergies.

http://www.holisticdog.org/Nutrition...atinballs.html

It may be in your best interest to consider a RAW diet for him. There is lots of information on how to do that in the Raw Food forum here at pets.ca, and there are lots of members who feed raw who would be happy to answer any questions you have about it!

[kandy]

While the prescription foods do seem to alleviate the symptoms of some conditions, I truly believe that it is due to the additives in the food. IMO the prescription diets are nothing but cheap fillers and questionable meat protein sources. Kind of like eating fast food burgers every day and taking a multi vitamin - sooner or later the diet itself is going to catch up to you. IMO you'd be much better off to find a high quality food, or even go with a raw diet, rather than feed a prescription diet.

I was also going to suggest supplementing with the satin balls.

I quickly looked at a few high quality foods, and every single one that I looked at either has potatoes or carrots/peas.

Edited to add that Hill's Z/D has soybean oil in it so that may not be a good choice if your guy is allergic to soy.

[Shanantina]

Originally Posted by kandy

While the prescription foods do seem to alleviate the symptoms of some conditions, I truly believe that it is due to the additives in the food. IMO the prescription diets are nothing but cheap fillers and questionable meat protein sources. Kind of like eating fast food burgers every day and taking a multi vitamin - sooner or later the diet itself is going to catch up to you. IMO you'd be much better off to find a high quality food, or even go with a raw diet, rather than feed a prescription diet.

I was also going to suggest supplementing with the satin balls.

I quickly looked at a few high quality foods, and every single one that I looked at either has potatoes or carrots/peas.

Edited to add that Hill's Z/D has soybean oil in it so that may not be a good choice if your guy is allergic to soy.

Yeah, it's really hard trying to find him some good foods. I had him on a nice high quality food, but I actually had to 'down-grade' on food choices because of his allergies. Thank-you for your help

[Shanantina]

Originally Posted by My Lodi Girl

I also have a couple of dogs with allergies. I feed them Hills Prescription Diet Z/D Gold. It is a hypoallergenic dog food and has done wonders for my dogs. Lodi had such bad allergies that we were at the last resort of giving her steroids on a daily basis which I did not want to do. Have you tried giving him canned food? I believe Z/D comes in cans also. Also, pig ears are very high fat. My dogs always had the opposite problem, they needed to lose weight so I had to quit giving them pig ears. I know you can't feed him just pig ears but as a nightly treat, may help. Good luck!

Pig ears! Never thought of that, that should help, and I have not considered Canned food but I will look into that also. Thank-you so much.

[Shanantina]

Originally Posted by Chase_Mom

Wow that is TOUGH!

The protein and rice allergy would be easy enough to work around, but all the good foods like Orijen 6 Fish or Acana Grasslands (Lamb) have potato in them! What on earth is he eating now?

Anyway, you could try supplementing his diet with "Satin Balls" - here's a link to one recipe, though there are lots of variations that you can search for and alter them to suit your needs and accomodate his allergies.

http://www.holisticdog.org/Nutrition...atinballs.html

It may be in your best interest to consider a RAW diet for him. There is lots of information on how to do that in the Raw Food forum here at pets.ca, and there are lots of members who feed raw who would be happy to answer any questions you have about it!

Yeah it is quite tricky! He's even allergic to grass and pollin.. I'll certainly look into the satin balls, I never heard of them before. I'll also look into the raw food diet, thank-you! We had him on a high quality food but now we had to downgrade because of his allergies. Poor guy. We have him on IAMS Large Breed

[Frenchy]

Originally Posted by Shanantina

Pig ears! Never thought of that, that should help, and I have not considered Canned food but I will look into that also. Thank-you so much.

Be careful with the pig ears , your dog can easely get diarhea if he eats too much of it.