Never a kinder soul than my Beau - Page 5

I have been feeding raw for over 10 years and never had an issue with the food. My son's dog, also raw fed all his life developed something similar about 2 months ago. His vet did tests, put the dog on a bland diet and antibiotics and he was fine. His vet said that it was fine to put him back on raw. don't automatically blame raw feeding.

Glad Beau is doing well.

I ate a hamburger @ Wendy's last year, and had a massive gall bladder attack that evening. Cause/effect?  Well, in that particular case, yes, to some extent, because it was a particularly *greasy* burger [there was even grease on the bun  ] but the fact was that the underlying gall stones were there before I ate the hamburger, so it's not like Wendy's caused the attack.

I know this.

Do you think I've eaten another hamburger from that particular Wendy's since then?  Nope.  Can't do it.  I've gotten chicken, and chicken sandwiches, and salads and all manner of other things from there, but not a single burger, because I know I wouldn't be able to swallow it if I tried.

So whether the raw feeding played any role in Beau's illness or not is immaterial--his person is never going to be comfortable feeding raw to him again, because that doubt is always going to be in the back of her mind.  I don't see the problem--if my dog thrived on shredded hundred dollar bills, and I could afford to do so, then shredded hundreds is what he or she would get fed.  Whatever works for the individual dog, and for that dog's owner, is what's most important.

And I'm relieved Beau is on the mend, too, because I wasn't sure how things turned out after reading the first post, either!

Hexe, yes, consuming fatty foods can trigger an acute gall bladder attack, but like you said, the stones have to be there first.

(This happened to my husband, as a matter of fact.)

I guess feeding our dogs is a lot like our own personal diets, which are determined by culture as well as personal preferences. What one culture considers healthy, we may consider gross and harmful. For instance, in Chinese medicine, certain conditions require heat while others require cold. For that reason, it is considered harmful to give a new mother cold liquids to drink. And, of course, that's EXACTLY what Western hospitals will give her: lots of ice water at the bedside!

 K & Beau:

  I know you are worn out and I had no idea when YOU emailed me it was that serious.

   Kiss him for me.. and  now my 3 cents worth.

!> I agree with Jenni......   take it easy on the amount you are feeding  Beau...pull back and only do two times a day.....smaller amounts..

2> I do not believe it was the raw.   THAT being said,.... some dogs cannot eat chicken...some dogs do well on one meal of raw and one meal of kibble..

3> I will never feed anything Diamond Food com . produces.
    

     I do not trust them nor do I like their attitude from their vets in their labs to the management.

     Diamond has had more RECALLS than any other food com in my books.

4.  Blue Diamond   ...avoderm \ ANYTHING  that doesn't have corn as first ingredient..

5. Take your time , let him heal with chicken and rice...

6. Introduce only one thing at a time back into his diet...

7.  Remember he is a puppy and a PRECIOUS cargo..I never had a sick pup from food so I am at loss of words..

8. I do not and never have ever taken my dog to a DOG PARK....I DO NOT TAKE A puppy to Petsmart and let them walk on the floor there.

9. I do not even take my pups to a vets office if there is any kind of outbreaks of parvo or Distenper. MY vet knows it...he comes out to  my truck...for what ever...MY dogs actually do not ever go to the vet unless they need a tumor removed or are on their last legs.

10.   Just keep him calm, and please do not give  him  water with chlorine in it.....and stay out of the lake for a while..He is young and his immune system has now been compromised...He will be fine but he needs some probiotic either in yougurt or by  supplemental form..Nothing else..just good dog food and plenty of water...without chlorine..in it..

Email me  ....Get some rest .....I worry so much I make myself sick over my dogs ..so I know you do too..

GOOD luck and just do not worry..he is a dog and he has lots of fortitude and A very good mom to keep him safe...JUST let him rest and keep him also outside only 30 mins   in sun as he does need vit D , but do not let him get exhausted like pups do...

YR

Good Morning, here are the updates from around 9pm-current (almost 8am here).

No vomiting, no runny stools and appears to have his appeitite back, but I'm continuing to follow vet's orders of small, frequent amounts of bland boiled chicken and rice diet.

Energy level is back, with vengence. I opened the pen this morning and he FLEW out of it. Obviously, not literally, but he was pretty happy, seemed like his usual self. We went out, he peed, no bowl movement as of yet, but evidently it snowed at some part in the night so he was content to eat the fresh snow (it was precious to see him playing and biting at the flakes)

Water intake is good, but I'm also taking it easy on that because I don't wish to overwhelm his stomach, but as of right now, nothing is coming up, he's keeping food and water down, since about 9am - Yesterday.

Now, to address some of the responses and Personal Messages I recieved.

Thank you, not only to Blitzen, but to Euroshepherd, SitasMom, Sunsilver and others who PM'd. Sometime today, I'll write you all back.

Thank you YellowRose, who managed to get great information on here, I'll attempt to answer most of these.

Beau and I NEVER, EVER, UNDER ANY CURCUMSTANCES go to a Dog park. This was a HUMAN recreational park, in Holly, Michigan to be exact. Lake Heron is the exact lake we were in for several weeks now.

I have always known how dangerous those leash-free parks can be. I mean goodness, how can you trust that someone else's dog isn't sick, or that they're dog won't be vicious? It'd scare me too much to even enjoy taking him. He has another dog here, at home, to enjoy without the danger of being attacked.

While I don't prefer to take my kids to the vet's office because it's the same as a doctor's office (where the sick kids go, and who knows WHAT they're sick with) I was scared to death my baby was going to pass away in my arms. I would've taken him to a witchdoctor from LA to fix him, if I had thought it would've worked. I didn't care about the bill, and still won't, I wouldn't care if it had cost thousands to fix him, so long as he wasn't suffering. (Total bill from yesterday, including xrays, fecals, bloodwork, exams, etc... came out to be roughly  $900, so still not bad for all he had done)

Speaking of which, Bloodwork came back. We had a CBC ran (my vet does in-house) and the only thing that came back was a SLIGHTLY raised White Blood Cell count. Dr. Andre said it easily could be from Coccidia (despite having SEVERAL negative fecals) so she went ahead and gave me 8day course of Albon. Also, he was put on Fortiflora. 

If I have forgotten anything, I am sorry, the day started at 2:30am and ran to about 1:30am by the time I fell asleep (was scared to close my eyes, even for a moment).

Beau appears to be feeling better, he's certainly MUCH more like his old self, though as per vet's orders, I'm trying to keep him calm. (not the easiest thing to do with a workingline GSD puppy)

Thank you again for those who attempted to either help me with advice, or comfort me with soothing words, we made it through the first, of hopefully many healthy nights!

Good to hear your little baby is feeling better!!  ;)  

Hi,

I just read this and I have had the exact same experience with my boy who was about the same age. I took him for short walk up some dunes close to a beach. Had a good time. Got back to my then girlfriends flat and he exploded. Vomit, stools, like water all over her flat (as a side note her father who I didn't enjoy stood in a whole lot of it ;D). Late night at the emergency vet, meds, chicken, rice - seems like the same story. Took a day or two aswell and he was right as rain. At this time he was on a consistent high quiality kibble diet, but this did not cause it, that would be illogical.

Most likely he ingested something that his stomach disagreed with. This is an essential and advantageous evolutionary response to something the stomach deems harmful. People, dogs, we get sick, we ingest;inhale bacteria;viruses, it happens, if it didn't we would literally drop dead at our first infection. And no reason at all to wrap him in cotton wool, you rule out the obvious/deadly stuff, then you carry on, he is better and stronger now than he was before. If you get a cold, a doctor could most often not isolate the exact virus, same story. Its not relevant, you rule out the deadly, because for obvious reasons we tend to know those and can test specifically for them. 

On the note of foods, I've had nights more recently up mopping puke and vomit from contaminated dog food, confirmed by tests run by the food company. Fortunately it was after the first time I fed it to him from a new bag so there was no doubting it or stressing at the time, I knew what it was.

So to each his own I think, food is a bit like religion, the science is there, but people will ignore it quite easily in favour of what they believe. I really like science though, so for me after the contaminated dog food it has been raw all the way. Changed my dogs lives.

So, did we ever figure out what the cause was? Is he better?

Yeah, I figured out what the problem was, alright...I took him to a different vet, they SMEARED his fecal and saw an overgrowth of bacteria, prescribed him Flagyl and Amoxicillin for 10 days.

I'm so beyond pissed that the simple concept escaped my previous vet. I had finally had enough, went to a new one (who was also 1.5hours ONE WAY closer) and she took great care of Beau. He still has 4 days left of the Flagyl and Amoxicillin and his stools are just perfect. The new vet also recommended I put Beau on a Probiotic for a month or two, to "get some good bacteria back in his gut", so I ordered some chewie probiotics for him.

He is still on the bland diet, but as per NEW vet's orders, I have slowly started mixing in a few pieces of his kibble, but due to the delicate condition of his stomach currently, instead of a 10 day span of transitioning him off of the bland and on to the kibble, she suggested drag it out to 15 days conversion.

Thanks for checking up on him, Jenni, I think perhaps we might've gotten off on the wrong foot.

Oh, before I forget; the new vet did a smear (as mentioned) but also sent the remainder of the fecal off to a lab (she didn't even charge me extra for this!) he was negative for any parasites, but they too reported back an overabundance of bacteria.

As of right now (he's 6 days into his Flagyl and Amoxicillin treatment) he's feeling great. He just started the probiotic chewies, so nothing to report there. 

Ya know something funny? I Google'd my old vet, and it seems like pre-2004 (when they expanded and built a new office) they had excellent reviews. Post-2004, nothing but negative feedback of clients claiming they were being charged ungodly amounts of money, for what they perceived to be to pay for the new building.  Sure, the new office is gorgeous, I'll give them that, but this different vet has a nice office (no giant exotic fish tank in the waiting room, like the other vet) and they don't have the granite counter tops (like the previous vet) but their prices are much more reasonable, the place is equally clean, and the wait time (for both getting into a room and being seen by a doctor) is about half of what the previous vet was.

Over all, it seems to be a better situation at the new vet (Dr. Sarah James, is her name) and while I liked that Dr. Andre (Beau's previous vet) was always open to suggestions for treatment, she wasn't solving what was wrong with him. I shouldn't have to TELL her what to prescribe...That's what she went to MSU for umpteen years for.

You have a very cute boy. Glad that he is better. After having ducks to train dogs on, I know that fowl carry lots of disease and too bad you didn't know this from the beginning. And I will agree that raw isn't for everyone. Have you considered cooking the meat? IMO still better than kibble....

I personally feel that it's only a matter of time before TOTW or any OTHER food made at ANY DIAMOND pet food plants becomes contaminated and dogs will once again get sick. One of their plants just had another salmonella outbreak and as we all know how easy it is to cross contaminate something like that. I've been feeding raw for years to rescue dogs and my own. I have had a couple of incidents of illness BUT they were my fault for not keeping the meat refrigerated while thawing. I do feed ground as one of my dogs has a really hard time digesting the bones. I no longer feed the rolls of meat. The ones that say the meat is from one of any number of countries.

I think everything in moderation. I will occasionally still feed kibble but I've noticed lately that the salt content in most of the so called " grain free" foods is Outrageous!!! Try finding a good food that doesn't have added salt. If the food was so good then there is no reason to add salt so dogs will eat it. And lentils really? Do I really need to feed garbonzo beans?