Went to the vet yesterday and everything checks out. Vet suggested adding fat, but the dog food I’m feeding is 18% fat. I can’t find anything with more fat. This dog is under 10lb and eating 2 to 3 cups of food a day. They get Kirkland chicken and rice and have for many years. They used to stay chunky on 1 cup a day. They are both sensitive to cheap foods, and the only thing near me is TSC and Walmart.
Ideas?
easiest thing to do, and very healthy, is to just drizzle salmon or sardine oil over the food.
Older dogs often have trouble absorbing nutrients, and should be put on a “performance” type diet, namely high fat/ high protein (a 30/20 formula, or even higher, a 35/25).
Tractor supply usually sells Diamond Naturals extreme athlete, which is decent in ingredients and exactly what an older dog needs re: fat and protein and easily digested carbs from rice.
Of course there are other, less pleasant reasons why an older dog might lose weight.
Vet specifically said to avoid high protein so those foods aren’t an option. I’m hoping to avoid oil due to the mess.
What other unpleasant reasons? He has no worms. Worming him was the first thing I did. He’s squeaky clean in that department.
why did he say to avoid high protein? it was proven some years ago that older dogs fed higher protein live longer.
The only reason to limit protein is if the dog has diagnosed kidney or liver disease.
unpleasant reasons: cancers come prominently to mind.
all dogs fed dry kibble should be supplemented with omega-3 fatty oils in some form. If you don’t like the liquid oils, try capsules of it- you can buy big bottles of fish oil caps intended for humans from most stores.
Vet just said high protein was bad for dogs. He maintains weight better with some cat food mixed in.
He’s had seizures and been on phenobabrb for years, so I honestly don’t expect him to be around too many more years. He’s 11.5 already.
Why is oil a mess? I get a salmon oil in a pump bottle and pump directly onto food.
Oil is messy because they are schnauzers, so the oil gets in their beards and thus all over every flat surface they can get to.
Hi protein is not bad for dogs…cat food is high protein. Why use that and not better food. TSC has several options available.
I would suggest an abdominal ultrasound as your next step.
Kirkland food is pretty darned good stuff, no corn, real meat, etc, and its higher fat and calories than the “better” foods I can get around here. Its 18% fat. The “better” stuff I found is at most 15%. Taking a step back in calories for similar ingredients seems like the wrong move.
I am familiar with Kirkland foods. TSC carries Taste of The Wild etc. However, if your dog was doing well on this food before and suddenly isn’t, I still think you need to do further diagnostics. Not all cancers, etc, show up on bloodwork. And typically, dogs on phenobarbital tend to be hungry and chubby, lol. Is there a university or specialty hospital near you?
How far are you from Mandeville?
I’m 4 hours from the closest university. The only vets around here are your typical back-woods small animal clinics. One of them tried to tell me this dog had no thyroid hormones after they tested those because “his blood looked funny” when they ran his phenobarb levels. The current vet is really the best I have. With a full-time job, no vacation, and a baby, I can’t make it 4hrs during business hours to take him to lsu.
When I looked up nutritional info on taste of the wild, it was similar or lower than the Kirkland food. I don’t see how that will help him gain weight.
What diagnostics have you run, other than a physical exam and fecal?
The unfortunate reality is that neoplasia of some sort is the #1 cause of weight loss in geriatric pets. Heart failure, liver disease and endocrine diseases follow closely.
If you dont want to work him up, and want to deal with the weight loss , you can always add something like “maxcal”. Its not the most palliative, but is quite a bit higher in calories. Calories = more weight, regardless where you get them from. Just remember that even with a significant increase in calories, he may or may not gain weight depending on if he is healthy or not.
Im assuming he has had liver values checked regularly while being on phenobarbital?
If you want to look further into why he is losing weight, I would consider an abdominal ultrasound to rule out organ failure (liver, kidney, adrenal, etc), lymphoma, carcinomatosis, hemangiosarcoma, adenocarcinomas etc. Often these are the main concerns in older dogs that do not always show up in bloodwork.
Also, when you said he had no thyroid hormomes…did you look further into that? Sometimes thyroid results can come back altered when there is a thyroid carcinoma (not hypothyroidism).
Hope you find a solution that works out for you and your pup!
I put him on the thyroid hormones temporarily, but he had no clinical signs and a very good vet tech friend of mine said the whole thing was horribly fishy. I took him off the hormones, had the blood work re-done, and he was cured. Magic.
He’s had a full blood panel. Liver and kidneys check out. No anemia. Protein within normal range. Phenobarb is low but he’s been maintaining on 1/3 or less of the minimum therapeutic dose until the last week, so I expected that. Bumped up his phenobarb and the seizures stopped again.
My other dog is in good weight. He has always been leaner in build but he’s closely Shane now and no visible ribs, but not fat. Its just the slightly younger one.
I don’t think my vet has ultrasound equipment, but the horse vet does. I may be able to talk him into checking the little guy out next time I’m in Shreveport.
A horse vet will not be able to perform the ultrasound you need. You need a small animal specialist…internal medicine or preferably a certified radiologist.
Good luck.
Agree 100% with Beckham03. The frequencies for pregnancy checks on horses vs. abdominal ultrasounds on small dogs (pediatrics) are quite different. Tendon ultrasounds that some large animal vets use have linear probes, which are not useful for abdominal ultrasounds.
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