[blossom24]

Hi everyone, I am after a little advice please.
My 13yr old German Shorthaired Pointer seems to have become intolerant of her senior pedigree sachet food( she has one sachet a day and dry food separately).
She has been having occasional bouts of diarrhoea and wind so I feed here rice and chicken for a few days (more rice than chicken), which she loves, and all seems to go back to normal.
Can anyone recommend a good "wet food" to replace the pedigree please?

[ty webb]

Originally Posted by blossom24

Hi everyone, I am after a little advice please.
My 13yr old German Shorthaired Pointer seems to have become intolerant of her senior pedigree sachet food( she has one sachet a day and dry food separately).
She has been having occasional bouts of diarrhoea and wind so I feed here rice and chicken for a few days (more rice than chicken), which she loves, and all seems to go back to normal.
Can anyone recommend a good "wet food" to replace the pedigree please?

Hi, although not a "wet food" i give my 11yr old Greyhound IAMS for Senior dogs, Greyhounds get 2 or 3 small meals per day, soaked in cold water for a couple of hours, i also add sardines,mackerel,chicken or tuna to it, he seems to be thriving on it.

[molliepops]

We use butchers tripe loaf type food, for our gluten intolerant girl. Interestingly she would never eat any pedigree foods always turned her nose up so I think she must have had some sense they weren't good for her.

[Josephine_1]

How long has she been on this food without any issues?? I don't think Pedigree if the best food out there by a long way but at 13 if this 'intolerance' is something new and she has been on the food for some time I would take her to the vets for a general check up and just to see if there is anything else going on there because of the age factor. When considering changing food I am sure you know always do it carefully/gradually so not to make the tummy upset worse! For a good wet food that is reasonable in price I like the trays from Pets at Home 'Wainwrights' there is also Nature Diet as well. Intolerance to chicken is common in dogs, so you may think you are giving them something 'easy' on the tummy by giving chicken but that may be something that makes it worse sometimes as I have found with my own at least!

[molliepops]

Intolerances and allergies can start suddenly at any age. Duncan didn't become allergic to things until he was 5 years old, Mollie was intolerant at a couple of months. Same in humans I didn't become allergic until I was 48 then I became allergic to multiple things.

[blossom24]

Thanks for your replies everyone. Amber had her yearly "MOT" a couple of months ago, boosters etc and all was well.
Her vet recommends chicken and rice whenever she has a dicky tum, and it seems to work fine, so fingers crossed she's not become allergic to that!
I'm going to give your suggestions a try, introducing different things gradually and then if she still has a problem off to the vets we go!
I'll let you know the outcome. x

[ty webb]

Originally Posted by blossom24

Thanks for your replies everyone. Amber had her yearly "MOT" a couple of months ago, boosters etc and all was well.
Her vet recommends chicken and rice whenever she has a dicky tum, and it seems to work fine, so fingers crossed she's not become allergic to that!
I'm going to give your suggestions a try, introducing different things gradually and then if she still has a problem off to the vets we go!
I'll let you know the outcome. x

Good luck

[Josephine_1]

Best of luck and glad to hear the MOT went well Keep us updated on how the food changes go.

[DaisyBumbleroot]

We started giving our 12 year old Jack Pedigree senior, after about ten days it made her sick, so we switched back to Sainsburys.

Ive been looking for dog recipes though with proper food - dogforum.com has a fair bit

[xdow]

our older dog wouldn't eat any wet dog food and would only pick at dry food, so she had cooked meals every day instead. she was spoiled rotten.
a handful of chopped offal (heart, liver or kindey) or meat offcuts, boiled in a little bit of water together with a small amount of mixed frozen vegetables (any supermarkets own, you know the stuff, usually made up of peas, sweetcorn and those little cubes of carrot) and a bit of either pasta, rice or potato all boiled together. (tried to balance it as much as possible as it was her main meals)

she had a tiny pinch of bisto added as well for a bit more taste, though had wagg gravy been widely available at the time, she would have had that instead.

if you don't mind doing that, it's a real treat for them to have.

Pedigree, as it goes is a pretty basic quality wet food, it's the same kind of stuff you'd find in any formulation around the same price. supermarkets own, though maybe not the value brands, could be a way to go if the pedigree continues to disagree.

loads of people swear by pedigree, but there are just as many people who play heck about it.
we know a breeder who plays heck about ceasar dog food as it's full of crap, basically!

one of the ones mentioned above - Nature Diet is a really good one though, and must have some good stuff in it as every now and then, our girl would entertain it.

[DaisyBumbleroot]

Originally Posted by xdow

our older dog wouldn't eat any wet dog food and would only pick at dry food, so she had cooked meals every day instead. she was spoiled rotten.
a handful of chopped offal (heart, liver or kindey) or meat offcuts, boiled in a little bit of water together with a small amount of mixed frozen vegetables (any supermarkets own, you know the stuff, usually made up of peas, sweetcorn and those little cubes of carrot) and a bit of either pasta, rice or potato all boiled together. (tried to balance it as much as possible as it was her main meals)

she had a tiny pinch of bisto added as well for a bit more taste, though had wagg gravy been widely available at the time, she would have had that instead.

if you don't mind doing that, it's a real treat for them to have.

Pedigree, as it goes is a pretty basic quality wet food, it's the same kind of stuff you'd find in any formulation around the same price. supermarkets own, though maybe not the value brands, could be a way to go if the pedigree continues to disagree.

loads of people swear by pedigree, but there are just as many people who play heck about it.
we know a breeder who plays heck about ceasar dog food as it's full of crap, basically!

one of the ones mentioned above - Nature Diet is a really good one though, and must have some good stuff in it as every now and then, our girl would entertain it.

How much more expensive does it work out for you, do you reckon to feed your dogs proper food?

At £5 for 12 standard size cans of sainsburys own, its pretty cheap to feed my dogs this, and 12 cans lasts around a week.

But offal, frozen veg and rice isnt exactly pricey, Im thinking it could be just as cheap and healthier for me to cook a batch and freeze some for later.

I read on a few sites its a good idea to add egg shells (ground up to powder in a coffee grinder though!) as they will miss out the clacium from shop bought fodder.

[molliepops]

I used to cook for ours but we always supplemented with vitamin tablets from the vet as it's amazing how quickly a vitamin deficiency can creep up. tbh It cost about the same when we were doing it but if you can buy the cheaper foods that works out far less expensive than cooking for them.

[pugamo]

Originally Posted by blossom24

Thanks for your replies everyone. Amber had her yearly "MOT" a couple of months ago, boosters etc and all was well.
Her vet recommends chicken and rice whenever she has a dicky tum, and it seems to work fine, so fingers crossed she's not become allergic to that!
I'm going to give your suggestions a try, introducing different things gradually and then if she still has a problem off to the vets we go!
I'll let you know the outcome. x

Applaws is a good natural wet food. Expensive though.

[xdow]

Originally Posted by DaisyBumbleroot

How much more expensive does it work out for you, do you reckon to feed your dogs proper food?

At £5 for 12 standard size cans of sainsburys own, its pretty cheap to feed my dogs this, and 12 cans lasts around a week.

But offal, frozen veg and rice isnt exactly pricey, Im thinking it could be just as cheap and healthier for me to cook a batch and freeze some for later.

I read on a few sites its a good idea to add egg shells (ground up to powder in a coffee grinder though!) as they will miss out the calcium from shop bought fodder.

To be honest, i can't really recall, we lost the dog who used to be fed like this last year to old age.


the bits and pieces to put together for it aren't pricey at all - i think i used to buy three or four lamb hearts, chop them up and split them out into around 8 or 10 bags, and added around the same amount of the vegetables. those fed her and had a little bit left over for our other dog. (Both Border Collies)
so around £4 or £5 a week as she was on one meal a day of this.
maybe around £10 with her dry food (bakers, plus bakers meaty meals ) & treats added in as well.

i used to freeze the meat and vegetables together raw, then tip it out into a pan of water and cook it entirely from frozen with a few bits of pasta or rice added from the cupboard.

I can't really offer any insight into the cost of that against a brand of canned food though, as the last time i think she actually ate any "proper" wet dog food was back in 2005.
to this day i'm out of the loop on the cost of wet dog food, we just deal in dry for The Boy


I wouldn't really recommend doing it without looking into it first with a look to balancing it correctly, especially if it is going to be the dogs main meals
I started doing it as our girl just refused to eat - Mum wanted to give her princes tinned roast beef in gravy for every meal (around £1.29 a can & jam packed full of salt) as she'd eat that. It would have been incredibly bad for her compared to the prepared meals i was doing her though, so even if the mixed meals weren't perfectly balanced for her - they were better than what she would have had otherwise if you see what i mean.

[DaisyBumbleroot]

Originally Posted by xdow

I wouldn't really recommend doing it without looking into it first with a look to balancing it correctly, especially if it is going to be the dogs main meals
I started doing it as our girl just refused to eat - Mum wanted to give her princes tinned roast beef in gravy for every meal (around £1.29 a can & jam packed full of salt) as she'd eat that. It would have been incredibly bad for her compared to the prepared meals i was doing her though, so even if the mixed meals weren't perfectly balanced for her - they were better than what she would have had otherwise if you see what i mean.

Thanks

I know on othe forums, they have advised the same as you to get a good balance.

I suppose rice and pasta are inexpensive and so are bags of pre-frozen veg for a start and the supermarket is always marking down meat so we can get them offal and proper meat for treats.

We have Ren in the vets tomorrow for her 3 monthly check-up and Ill be asking the vets about it. Tinned food isnt sitting well with McGee either, his poos are often squidgy and runny (sorry!) and two mornings in a row he has puked up. Just bile, just on a morning, so we need to speak with the vets about him as well.

[molliepops]

Just bile could mean you are not feeding often enough, we had to put Molliepops onto 3 meals a day evenly spaced to stop that problem. She was having enough food she just needed it more often.

[DaisyBumbleroot]

Originally Posted by molliepops

Just bile could mean you are not feeding often enough, we had to put Molliepops onto 3 meals a day evenly spaced to stop that problem. She was having enough food she just needed it more often.

He gets two meals a day, breakfast and tea but I'll be asking the vet tomorrow anyway

[xdow]

if it is just bile it could be a case of just giving him a small meal, or a treat every few hours so his stomach doesn't get empty
our old girl had that problem too, but making sure she had something small every few hours saw her right
that something small was as simple as having a bowl of bakers down at all times for her - when she fancied it, she just went and got a few bits.
not the ideal solution if you have more than one dog really, but we were lucky in that case as out boy knew what was his and what wasn't

[blossom24]

Just a quick update.. my baby is snoring contently on the sofa, no wind or runny poo for a couple of days now. I've given her butchers tripe and of course her bakers afterwards ( which she eats as and when) and she seems to love it! I'll see how it goes and keep you up to date...thanks again everyone.
Good luck at the vets tomorrow DaisyBumbleroot x

[DaisyBumbleroot]

Originally Posted by xdow

if it is just bile it could be a case of just giving him a small meal, or a treat every few hours so his stomach doesn't get empty
our old girl had that problem too, but making sure she had something small every few hours saw her right
that something small was as simple as having a bowl of bakers down at all times for her - when she fancied it, she just went and got a few bits.
not the ideal solution if you have more than one dog really, but we were lucky in that case as out boy knew what was his and what wasn't

Thanks . He didn't do it this morning, and he had a good dump.

We used to leave biscuits out for Ren but we have three now and I know two will try and eat them all in one go and also they will argue.

Vets later so I'll let you all know what our vet says.

Originally Posted by blossom24

Good luck at the vets tomorrow DaisyBumbleroot x

Thanks! Just Rensters 3 month check up, she has a dicky ticker, but the vets don't mind us asking 8 million questions.

[crunchienut]

Our dog developed an extremely sensitive tum a few months back, everything we gave him was making him ill, including all kinds of expensive stuff. (Boiled chicken worked though).
We put him on a food called Chappie when the vet recommended it, not to sound like an advert, but it did work wonders, he's perfectly fine now. Its very cheap aswell £15 for 17kg,
Thought i'd give my bit of input just incase, but i hope you don't need it and you sort things out at the vets.

[Absolutely]

I can only agree re the dog food Chappie, not the most expensive by any means, but highly recommended by my Vet too.
One of my dogs had pancress problems and we now only feed him Chappie (dry food, and sometimes the tin food), and he is doing well on it. Infact we now feed all our dogs (I have 3) the same food. I also remember when we had a dog with sensitive tummy 20 years ago, the Vet at that time also recommended Chappie.
Low in fat as well.

[DaisyBumbleroot]

Sorry blossom for hijacking your thread!

Well, came back from the vets and she said that it does indeed sound like McGee has a sensitive tummy. She said Internet people often have a drum to bang and unless you know a lot about dog nutrition, it's difficult to get the balance right. She said pet companies do spend a lot of money on research and while the supermarket stuff isn't the greatest, it's fine, if their tummies can take it.

She said the main thing is, is to get one make and STICK with it once you know their tummies are ok.

She said dry is best and if you give wet, they should have some dry mixed in (which I didn't know!) and she said it doesn't have to be the expensive stuff, in fact, try CHAPPIE!!! I just smiled and told her about this thread, so chappie it is

Thanks y'all!


Edit - and Rennage is doing well! If we didn't have her on her meds, she'd have been gone about 12 month ago, there is still life on the old dog