Hello I was wondering if anyone could give advice. I have a 6 months puppy, who we got at 8 weeks. He came to us on pedigree so we kept him on it. After about 3 months he started farting, which didn't bother me much at first, but they got more frequent and smellier. A month ago I got to the point were I couldn't stand it. Made me feel sick, plus smelling so bad I kept worrying he'd had an accident in the house. So had a word with the pet store owner about getting better quality food and she suggested well beloved, and said it could be he is sensitive to wheat/cereals. We made the switch and the farts stopped/faded pretty quickly. This lasted about 3 weeks and now the farts are back and getting worse. I thought maybe it was a type of meat but what he's on now is lamb and the last big bag of pedigree he had was chicken. So i'm stumped as to what to do to limit the farts or at least the smell!

Sadly mostly it is food so it will be trial and error until you find one that suits, friends of ours have found orijen fairly good for their boxer but it's very expensive. I think they were at the end of their tether with the problem so anything was better than the smells they were having to live with.

It is almost certainly the food but if he has soft stools also it might be worth a vet trip.

But - you could try either feeding BARF (Biologically Appropriate Raw Food) or a commercial Biologically appropriate food like Origen. You usually get good results with that. Otherwise, try transitioning to another food with no grain such as Wainrights Potato and Salmon - some dogs can't even cope with rice.

Additionally - does the pup gulp it down? Try to slow down his eating. You can 'hide' food so he has to go look or put it in a Kong or Kong wobbler.

Also - I presume he gets training treats? These could be the problem especially if commercial. Try using a little ham instead or just some of his dinner kibble.

If all else fails you can add charcoal biscuits to his dinner.

Good luck - my dogs rarely trump (Murphy is still surprised when he does ) but my boyfriend often smell like something crawled up his behind and died. It isn't fun.

Thanks guys.

He does wolf down his food frighteningly quick. Sometimes he ends up gulping/hiccupping/heaving after. I did use to make him stop start to try to slow him down, but it made no difference and just left us both frustrated. I'll try giving him his food in a kong so he has no choice but to eat slower. His stool's are normally fine, his stomach is easily upset though, when he's stressed or we end up with visitors or as guests and people give him lots of human food.

I don't stick to one treat type put it tends to be good quality or small pieces of meat because my older dog is a snobby eater and typical dog biscuits don't interest her.

I feel your pain OP,
Ours doesn't often let one off, but when he does it is a force to be reckoned with! I also sometimes think he might have had an accident because the smell is that bad, he never has though.

I think your best bet is probably a trip to the vet, you'll be able to get a more specific answer from them.

We'll be making a trip to the vet this week anyway for a 6month check up, and to make sure his teeth are growing through fine as advised by vet. But normally for general check ups or questions on puppies/dogs there's one experienced nurse who they always give you and she's one of those bitter, too use to stupid owners type (if you know what I mean) so she essentially doesn't listen to you, tells you its all your fault but doesn't actually give constructive advice relevant to your situation, and tries to push what ever dog food on you the vets are selling at the time (because this cures all ails) as well as their training classes.

Seriously I once went in for advice on his toileting. He was 4 months, fully toilet trained, even went to the back door and pawed when he needed the toilet. However if I left him alone for more then a couple of minutes unsupervised, even if he'd literally just been, he'd go to the toilet in the house. If I left him in the house alone for more then 30 mins (only ever in utility room where his cage is) he would pee and poo everywhere. But not one of each, he'd do mini bits of each ALL OVER the room. As if he' started going and then decided lets spread this out as much as I can. And then he'd SIT in it. Baring in mind I couldn't stay glued to his side, it resulted in me having to wash poo of him most days. I never gave him food or water after 6 and ever fed him within an hour of me going out. He didn't go more then was normal when I was there and his stools were normal, nor did he ever seem distressed or upset about it. So I didn't know what to do if anything but the nurse just told me I hadn't toilet trained him and needed to teach him to go outside, so I should be letting him out regularly, and he should associate the back door with going to the toilet. She wouldn't listen to me that he did if I was there. She told me I was seriously endangering my dog by not toilet training him, gave me loads of leaflets on how to toilet train a dog and then insisted on putting it on his file because its a massive issue for a dog of his age not to be toilet trained. I went home feeling like I was awful and wanting to cry. Couple of weeks later he stopped without me changing anything, in fact the little minx figured out how to use handles to open doors to let himself out to go toilet! So now I have to lock all the doors or he just lets himself and my other dog who loves jumping fences out.

Sounds a very clever pup So the Kong or a puzzle feeder would have the added bonus of keeping him occupied as well as stopping him swallowing down air with the gulping

Firstly. I would change my vet. A nursing aid who doesn't listen or appreciate what sounds like a wonderful dog owner is a definite no no.

A six month old dog who is apparently trained should not be messing in the home. From what you say - you have done all the right things.

I would try a new vet practice and make it clear you need to talk to a vet - not a nurse - about the problems you are having. He sounds healthy and very intelligent - and yet those are not traits that indicate messing in the home. He may have an allergy to certain food contents in what you are giving him - although you are clearly using good feeds.

Good luck - and keep us all informed?

Gave him his breakfast in his Kong and he was not very impressed with me but he figured it out.

We shouldn't be living here too much longer so i'll have no choice but to change vets . And they were brilliant when my other dog was sick.

Ha ha ha - I can just imagine him

Like What the actual *@!$ do you expect me to do with this? I want food, in an actual g'dm bowl and I want it now human!



Bet it slowed him down a bit......

if there are any pet shows near you with a royal canin stand, they often give out slow feeding puzzle bowls for free

our border collie got bored with his though and left half of his food (wasn't such a bad thing as he is on a diet)
but mum ditched it in favour of his old bowl as "he'll starve" a (then) 29kg border collie will starve having not eaten around 60g of food?
yeah right!

i'm not going to be very helpful with advice regarding messing in the house - our boy still wasn't completely clean until he was 3.
it always seemed to be because of necessity though, and he always chose the same tile in the kitchen.

he's an odd one. never known a dog do that for so long then suddenly just stop.

Re-trumping though, aren't the X and potato foods usually suitable for this kind of intestinal distress?

Burns Pork and potato or Harringtons Salmon and potato come to mind.
harringtons state on their packaging that they reduce flatulent odours, but obviously it depends on your choice of feeding.

i would perhaps look into the possibility of a wheat sensitivity first.
and try to cut out treat/human food as much as possible (plain chicken i think will be fine though, you can also dehydrate chunks of beef in the oven to use as treats)

my dog had a terribly sensitive stomach when he was younger, It can be difficult to pin point what is causing the distress sometimes. with him it appeared to be that his puppy food was too rich for him, then another food he was given was just.... i'd say it wasn't even good enough for the bin. and some of the treat sticks mum was giving him just didn;t agree with him. (and still don't today) Thankfully he grew out of this a bit though, and has a much better constitution these days, but he still can't stomach oily fish.

it's horrendous though, not knowing what to do. there were numerous bouts of diarrhoea within a 6 month period with him, this combined with adolescent eating habits making it difficult to get him to eat at all left him incredibly skinny, but still happy and active as ever.

hope you find something which agrees with him a bit better, nothing worse than rancid dog toots!

Yep! He got stuck straight in at lunch, but at dinner time he just sat staring indignantly back and forth between the kong, my husband and me for the best part of 5 minutes Was really amusing to watch. Bless him. Popped him into the vets, and saw a really nice lady after all my stressing about it! She said the Kong sounded like a brilliant idea and to give that a go for a couple of weeks so wahey to you stressmonkey And I also have to report that so far today I have not smelt a single disgusting toot, so *fingers crossed*.

Thanks Xdow. He most definitely is an odd one! But then we picked him because he was an odd mix (king Charles x husky - there's one brave King Charles out there!) so I can't complain. We've already ruled out the wheat from his diet as well. He definitely has a sensitive stomach - although nothing puts him off his food. He's an absolute pig! He'll eat anything and everything.

I can highly recommend charcoal biscuits - well it worked for us anyway. Our large lurcher used to do terrible farts - we used to have to leave the room as the air was so green and constantly had burners going to disguise the smell. However, since giving him half a charcoal boneo-type biscuit every day we hardly ever get a problem. He's always been on a wheat free food but that didn't make any difference to the amount of gas he produced.

Thanks jammoon, I'll try biscuits. I don't think it was the wheat food with my dog either. The farts stopped (i'm guessing with slowing down his eating with the kong) but he keeps having an upset stomach and has started eating his own poo now, so we are switching him back to something less rich. If the biscuits work that will be brilliant, because feeding him from a kong means filling it 6 times a day which drives me a bit mad on busy days.