May 23, 2011
My 6 month old GSD seems to have a sensitive stomach. Do you have any advice on foods or anything else I should do?
Full Question:
Ed,You have helped me with questions about my other dog in the past so I hope you have some time to help with this issue. I have a male GSD, he is now just about 6 months old. When we got him at 12 weeks he was on Iams puppy food. For whatever reason, when he moved into our home he really didn't want to eat this food anymore. After 3 weeks of him barely eating we decided to change his food to what we thought was a higher quality food called Bil-Jac. He liked the food and ate well but he consistently produced soft stools and pudding diarrhea. The vet told us it was part of his digestive system developing and would eventually go away. A few weeks went by so we took a stool sample to the vet - nothing wrong. The vet then said it must be the food and he instructed us to switch to Science Diet. We did and he started to produce normal stools. However, he still produces occasional soft stools and it usually takes him about 5 minutes to go to the bathroom (he will keep walking around the yard squatting). Usually he will produce a normal stool and then squeeze out a few small soft ones. Over the weekend he had diarrhea 3 times. The vet doesn't think anything is wrong with him and continues to suggest that it is part of his digestive system developing; he is very active, looks good and weighs about 59lbs. Do you think anything is wrong with him? Since the switch to Science Diet made him start producing more normal stools I agree with the vet that it is probably a food issue. However, after reading articles on your web site., you say the Science Diet is basically junk. I looked into the Honest Kitchen dog food but it seems it would cost me about $100 per month, which is a bit expensive for me. I also saw that you have a list of other kibbles that are supposed to be better than Science Diet. Can you recommend one of them that would be good for a dog like mine with a sensitive stomach? Or can you suggest anything else I should do to help my dog with this problem if indeed you think it is a problem?
Thanks,
Jim
Cindy's Answer:
If this were my dog I would feed the dog a raw diet. I would keep it very simple in the beginning – the one thing I would do would be to give the dog yogurt every day along with Probiotic. (we sell it and use it for our dogs) This helps provide the gut with digestive enzymes. This can be put on commercial dog food or as a supplement to raw.
Feeding raw is not something that is that expensive – we buy chicken leg quarters at Wal- Mart in the 10 pound bag for about 45 cents a pound. An adult GSD may eat 2 to 3 pounds a day.
With this said – every dog is different. So it takes some experimenting and education on your part. Read the archives of the web board. Use the search function – look up “diet” “Raw” “all natural” etc etc etc.
We also sell some excellent books on the topic.
Hope this helps.
Feeding raw is not something that is that expensive – we buy chicken leg quarters at Wal- Mart in the 10 pound bag for about 45 cents a pound. An adult GSD may eat 2 to 3 pounds a day.
With this said – every dog is different. So it takes some experimenting and education on your part. Read the archives of the web board. Use the search function – look up “diet” “Raw” “all natural” etc etc etc.
We also sell some excellent books on the topic.
Hope this helps.
100% (1 out of 1)
respondents found this answer helpful
Can't find what you're looking for?
100% (1 out of 1)
respondents found this answer helpful
