mydogroxy Posted April 25, 2003 Posted April 25, 2003 i recently switched my pit puppy over from eukanuba to wellness. for a while her poop has been extremely variable, from regular to super soft and gross. i mentioned this to my vet when we went for her check up a few days ago and she recommended i stop giving her any treats to see if the situation cleared up (we were thinking the treats might be the culprit). today she's only eaten the wellness . . . first thing this morning her poop was in good shape, but when i took her out just now it was quite soft, which makes me think that it could actually be the food that's not agreeing with her. i was wondering if anyone else had any problems with wellness, or had heard of anything like that? if it does turn out to be the food what would be a good food for her to eat (she's almost 6 months)? and i'm also curious about feeding puppies a barf diet? since they have different nutritional needs from an adult dog, how would the diet be tailored? thanks! Quote
courtnek Posted April 25, 2003 Posted April 25, 2003 Neither of my dogs could eat either Iams or Eukanuba....There may be something in the food that is disagreeing with her, but it could also be the water. Is your water in your area "hard"? (full of minerals and calcium and stuff?) I found a remarkable change in my dogs when I had a water filter installed. I would try a different food first, and then I would look into the water. There are kits you can get for testing for water quality, and they're not real expensive. Quote
mydogroxy Posted April 25, 2003 Author Posted April 25, 2003 i'll definitly try giving her the water i drink (it's always either filtered or bottled). i never thought of that as a possibility. Quote
courtnek Posted April 25, 2003 Posted April 25, 2003 No one ever does, because we think water that we can drink is safe for dogs, too. But it's not safe, at high lead and hard water levels, for US either. We tend to absorb things slower than dogs do. So long after the dog has died we may exhibit the first symptoms... Let us know how she does on the filtered and bottled water, if it makes an improvement. I decided to do it because I spoil my dogs, so if I was drinking filtered water than they would too. It made a remarkable difference in stool quality. :D p.s. I am not suggesting giving her bottled water every day, unless you're rich - lol - but you can put a faucet filter on the sink that will take care of the majority of "bad stuff" in the water. Quote
Nancy B Posted April 25, 2003 Posted April 25, 2003 Wellness is a very good food but, it may be that it just doesn't agree with your dog. Not all dogs do well on all foods no matter how hight quality they are. Another thing to consider is that perhaps you're giving her too much food. You should be feeding a smaller quantity of Wellness than you did with your previous food. Overfeeding will cause soft stools. Quote
Aroura Posted April 25, 2003 Posted April 25, 2003 Hey I can filter your water for you!!! Well at least I will be able to after tomorrow... I'm doing a prac in chem tomorrow where I have to filter water :lol: Anyways, just thought I'd add my two cents... I've never seen Wellness in any of the stores here, but I've heard its a good food. I know alot of foods don't agree with all dogs tummys, I know this better than most because for the first 9 months of Lilys life I couldn't find the right food for her, her stools always came out like runny ice cream, then I put her in some kennels for a week while I was on holidays and you know what? The first thing I noticed was that she had solid poop!!!! They fed Eukanuba there, so even though my budget disagreed with my decision, I switched her to that. Now instead I buy her pedigree principal and feed her a good deal of fresh meat, bones and cooked pumpkin with kelp, yoghurt and an egg every day, she's thriving. If I had the time and the money to make her up a proper BARF diet though there's no doubt thats what I'd feed her, tried it before and both the dogs thrive on it. Of course if you wanted to switch to BARF its well worth buying some books and subcribing to one of the BARF mailing lists. Whatever you choose, good luck! :D Quote
Mary's Mama Posted April 25, 2003 Posted April 25, 2003 This is actually a common issue with wellness and it is not that the food is bad. This is how I understand the problem. The carbs in the Euk (corn etc) are less digestable therefore bulking up the stool. The carbs in wellness are more digestible. More is being absorbed by the body rather than just passing through. It may take her body some time to stop working so hard to digest the food. Get some 100% pure pumpkin at the grocery and put a tblsp on her food. This will fix her right up. Eventually her body will adjust. It has just been working much harder to digest the old food and is now over doing it on the wellness. Give it time. I have feed wellness for 8 months and really love it. There is a wealth of information available about raw diets on the web. Check out this site: http://www.rawdogranch.com/ You can email the author if you have questions about your specific dog, she is very nice. Aurora - Be careful not to mix kibble and raw meats in the same meal. If you feed them at seperate meals you are okay. However, if feed together it can cause problems. The raw meats digest in 4 hours as opposed to the kibble in 8 hours. Feeding the kibble with the raw meat keeps the raw meat in the system for long enough that you could have problems with the bacteria. There is good information available about this if you would like to research it further. Quote
mydogroxy Posted April 25, 2003 Author Posted April 25, 2003 thanks for all the input guys! i'm going to try a few things to see how it goes. i wasn't planning on mixing raw meat and kibble though. i was just curious because if roxy doesn't adjust to the food, most likely i'll be switching her over to barf. :) Quote
Aroura Posted April 28, 2003 Posted April 28, 2003 Yeah I'd feed them both BARF without the kibble too if I could, but being a poor uni student without much time to prepare meals I really can't. I feed the meat and veggies in the morning and the kibble at night so its got a long time to digest while she sleeps. I know the whole raw meat in the same meal as kibble thing, so I don't do that. Quote
Guest Anonymous Posted June 3, 2003 Posted June 3, 2003 I recently switched to Wellness due to health issues of my 4 babies that I suspected had to do with the food. I had young dogs on Eukanuba puppy, & older dogs on the senior mix. Been on Wellness for about a month or 2...I noticed some mushy stools also. But My senior greyhound showed thyroid issues on her bloodtest/heartworm test this spring. After 17 days on the Wellness food, I had her bloodwork retested again right before she got her teeth cleaned for the year...results back from Mich State were beautiful. Besides the Wellness, I have also started cooking for them. Here's a good web page to check out, and a good book to read is titled "Food Pets Die For". Don't read it while you're eating! http://www.arescuemom.org/Eukanuba,IamsDogFood.html Quote
Angelboddy Posted June 3, 2003 Posted June 3, 2003 It also could be from swithing her from one food to another. If you have been using eukanuba for a long time then you might want to give her awhile for her to get use to the switch. That is one thing that i worry about when i decide to switch over my dogs food. She has been on netro max since she was about 7 weeks old, and someone told me on this board that it was bad for her. I've heard switching foods can irritate their stomach and bowel movements. So you just might want to give it some time. [/img] Quote
Malamum Posted June 3, 2003 Posted June 3, 2003 I'm kind of in the same boat as I have just recenlty switched Indy from Eukanumba to Innova and have noticed the same thing with his stools. With the Euk they were very firm however when I switched to Innova quite a few have been fairly mushy - not every time though. I have just finished the first bag of Innova and noticed they are getting better (no where near as mushy) so I am going to keep with the Innova and see how we go. I was assuming it was just taking a little while for his system to get used to the new food. I say stick with the Wellness a little while longer to give Roxy's body time to adjust. Quote
Kiger Posted June 4, 2003 Posted June 4, 2003 Kato has the same "problem". He had mushy stools on Canidae too, so I switched to Wellness. He was okay for a bit, then mushy again. He's been on it for several months now. I honestly don't know what to try. He looks great otherwise. I did get a sample of that Chicken Soup dog food. I mixed it with the Wellness and he picked around it to get to the CS. Only thing I don't like about the CS is it has salt added. It smells like chicken though whereas Wellness smells like herbs to me. He was even getting freeze dried "BARF" for awhile, but same problem - ok in the morning, mushy by afternoon. I'm going to try the filtered water thing too. Quote
mydogroxy Posted June 4, 2003 Author Posted June 4, 2003 roxy's poop problems are all gone! i think her body was just not used to the food quite yet. we haven't had any problems in a while, except for when miss begs treats off of everyone in the house and gets herself sick. she's doesn't seem to be especially enthralled by the food though, so i'm looking into that gravy that you add to dry food to make it yummy. Quote
Horsefeathers! Posted June 4, 2003 Posted June 4, 2003 Interesting... all eight of my dogs have been on Wellness for a while (a year maybe?) and even the fosters get Wellness and one of the things I LIKE about it is the firm, compact stools (well, as much as a person can like poop :oops: ). In the very beginning, with Wellness, one of my dogs got really super stinky, eye watering, dry heaving, make you gag gas for a while (a few months), but it eventually stopped and all are fine now. I also supplement with a cooked diet. I was contemplating switching to the Chicken Soup food, not because I think it's better, but because my local Wellness supplier seems to have such a difficult time getting Wellness, but they have shelf after shelf of the CS. I'm still not sure, though... I hate to switch. I did the BARF thing once on one of my allergy dogs and she got seriously ill. Quote
Kiger Posted June 4, 2003 Posted June 4, 2003 Hoo boy. I found the culprit tonight. Diagnosis tapeworm. Ick ick ick!!! Back to the vets we go... Quote
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