Tuesday, February 07, 2012

Food intolerance

Dobie has been battling colitis for 2 months on and off. Each time at the vet, the fecal exams come back clear and the vet prescribes Metronidazole. Then they suggested de-worming just in case he has parasites. I didn’t want to put Dobie through more medication so I tried a week on a bland diet.

At first, Dobie got his Purina Pro Plan Salmon and Rice kibble 50/50 with plain white rice. His stools became smaller, but still soft. Finally, he got acclimated to eating rice, so all he got was plain rice. This is when I saw the change. He had good solid poops, no straining, and he was able to hold it again. This confirmed my suspicions that his problems were food related. Though I’m not sure what ingredients upset his tummy.

The vet prescribed him Hills i/d. He’s doing fine on it, however I’m not happy with the ingredients. The first five ingredients are corn, brewers rice, dried egg product, chicken by-product meal and corn gluten meal. I can understand that it is a bland diet for dogs with gastrointestinal problems, but I didn’t expect a prescription diet to include chicken by-product meal! Gross!

After a week of good stools on the Hills i/d, I went to Global Pet Foods to pick up some Acana kibble. Since he’s doing well on the chicken based food, I got him a small bag of Acana’s Chicken and Burbank Potato. I’m mixing in ½ cup Acana, ½ cup Hills with 1 cup rice for him now and so far so good. Time to cross fingers and continue increasing the amount of Acana in his meal. Doesn’t his dinner look delicious?