Increase the food a bit every other day in each meal. But keep it small increases. If he is on all new food or still a mix... increase the new food.

Too much food can trigger a GI upset. So do is slowly maybe 1/8 cup each meal for a few days & if all is well increase it a bit more. But I'd still keep a dog with his history on a smaller ration then what is called for weight wise for a while. You can catch him up more after you are sure he is stable. Nothing is gained if he relapses. So IMO it's not worth it to trigger a problem & have to go back to square one.

I know that a total of 1/8 to 1/4 cup each meal doesn't seem like much...but over all is ends up being almost a cup more a day. So it adds up to more than it seems overall.

If he is 'working' for most of his food...you might make one of the meals a regular meal...so he is not burning the calories right off. If you want to do that..then instead of adding extra food at each meal....give him a bedtime meal that is a regular in his dish meal. But if you are going to do that give him a small amount to start off at bedtime & increase to a regular meal amount over a few days.

I feed my dogs am & pm (pups 3-4x a day up to 6-7 months). After their 'dinner' meal which is around 6- 7 pm there is no more playing. It is a little bit bigger meal then the morning one..but I want them to hold those calories. So no more running around. They get plenty of exercise during the day. Even pups that still get some play time at night....the play is toned down A LOT after their last meal. My dogs just crash on their beds at night after dinner. They are tired & have full stomachs.

Others may do things differently. But this has worked for me with my 4 W/L GSDs for the last 12 years & multiple other dogs thru the years.

Thanks again Anne. I really appreciate you sticking with me through this. I'm going to do one more day of 3/4 old food and 1/4 new food cause so far his poops have been good. He's currently getting 3 meals a day but starting tonight, I'll try adding a small snack at bed time and see how that goes.

He is a 10 month old American Mastiff and quite low energy/low drive. He's not burning lots of calories except at lunch time when he gets to go outside and play with my older dog. Because it is so bitter cold out right now, we go for short walks twice a day and then do multiple short (2-3 minute) training sessions a day.

Keep your fingers crossed we continue with good poops.

Help please! We did the extra meal at night using the 3/4 old and 1/4 new for two more days to make sure things were OK (and they were).

On Sunday, I started feeding 1/2 old with 1/2 new food. I used this for 4 days with good results. Starting this morning, I fed 1/4 old with 3/4 new food. He's had three meals at this ratio and now when I got home from work and let him out, the first poop was good and then the next one was back to the consistency of pancake batter.

This is so frustrating! I feel bad for him and I'm at a loss as to what to do next. Help please!!!

He is now 10 months old.

Edited by Debbie Martin (03/12/2015 05:32 PM)
Edit reason: add current age

Try going back to what worked...& the ratio of old to new that worked. 1/2 & 1/2? It is possible that the new food is 'richer' & harder for him to handle in higher quantities.

If you think the night meal was also a problem. ....drop it again for now. If you think he was ok with it...maybe lower the amount for a few days...but keep old ratio....or even just make it the old food.

It can be hard sometimes. Are sure he did not get into anything? Sometimes too much of the snacks or chewy sticks etc can put them over the top too.

If you can get him stabilized again on the ratio that worked..stay with for a few weeks. Eventually add an additional tablespoon of the old food am for a few days then the same PM for week. If he holds add another tablespoon the same way.

I would only increase the old food. Adding too much food can trigger a reaction. I'd be more concerned with just getting him on a food that agrees with him rather than worrrying about a higher quality food for now. Even if you have to go back to 100 0/0 the old food for months if he tolerates better.

Hope some of this helps. Good luck. Hang in there. I have a couple of friends that went thru this for almost a year with their dogs.

So he was totally fine on puppy chow? But not on the other foods?

Ok, so we'll go back to 1/2 old, 1/2 new. I don't think the evening meal was a problem as he had that for almost 5 days with no issues. I'll keep him on that for a few weeks before I make anymore changes.

I've been too scared to give him anything other than his food so he only gets one mini carrot at bedtime and nothing else during the day.

I've been keeping a food diary so I can keep track of exactly what I've been doing and what the result is.

I find it very ironic that my other dog Sasha, is *so* fussy that out of the 37 treats I've tried there's only 3 that she'll eat. She has an iron stomach and nothing bothers her. Now I get a new dog that will eat whatever you hand him, and then everything makes him sick. Such is life.

We'll keep muddling along. Thanks again for your help Anne.

Mara, With the puppy chow he was pretty good but I really don't want to feed that garbage to him. With him being a giant-breed pup and still growing, he needs better nutrition than that.

If that's what I have to feed to keep his poops decent, I'll do it but I really don't want to.

I understand that you want to give him better food...but if he can't handle it & it is going right thru him...he is not getting any benefit from it anyway. So that is why I say..that if you need to keep him on a higher ratio of the old to the new (as you increase the old little by very little)...at least you are getting some of the better food into him without trigger a negative response. If you can add some more of the old food to increase his overall food intake...then that is good for now & he will gain a bit of weight.

If you can get that to work...I'd just be happy to leave him at that for a few months & let him gain a bit of weight & stabilize & give his gut a good LONG rest....you will be ahead in the long run.

You can always try increasing the new food a few months down the road when he may not be a sensitive. Or you might try another new food after a number of months....that may agree with him better then the one you are trying now.

just some thoughts.

My Kenzi had gut issues for several months after a bout with giardia. Wrong food or too much and she'd get bloody diarrhea. At one point she was 5-6# underweight (close to 20% for her)

The key was getting her on food that that worked and keeping her on it while her gut healed. For Kenzi it was THK embark. She had to have at least 50% THK of there was issues. If it had been puppy chow I would have held my nose and fed it.

It took 4-5 months before I was able to fully transition her to a different food with no issues. Like Anne said, it's a long slow process.

FWIW, she can now eat a variety of high end foods just fine

My dogs eat raw beef a few times a week, especially in winter. I do feed some Dog Chow, some Puppy Chow. Never buy the same bag twice, never buy more than 20 lbs.

I suspect there may be turkey on the market, in the dog food, soon. There are like 30K dead turkeys in Minnesota, highly pathogenic avian influenza. All that protein will go someplace. Only half of those were sick and died --- the others were sacrificed to control the outbreak.