[Dailydrool] Cooking for the hounds, urinary crystals, circle pacing

[Jane Hay]

I get a kick reading about cooking for the hounds. I have to say that I
hate to cook and don't cook a whole lot for the DH and myself, much less
cook for the Houndettes. We buy the best kibble that we can afford and have
gone to a grain free salmon based product that has never been recalled. I
know it can happen any time with any kibble but I think this company has
pretty high standards and, so far, we haven't had any problems. I do add
baby carrots, green beans and yogurt to the Houndette's meals but that's as
far as I go with cooking (unless someone is sick and then they get chicken,
rice and bullion). I used to try and change things up for them but Suzy has
a very sensitive stomach and would end up with terrible diarrhea so I
stopped. Although, now that I think about it, that was when we were using
kibble with grains. Maybe I'll try switching things up with the grain free
food and see what happens. You only have to have a hound have that kind of
mess in the house once or twice before you become real hesitant about
changing things up! We did find out that, even if the ingredients are the
same as they have always been in the kibble, when a company changes hands,
they also may change where they get the ingredients that they use. We found
that out when the company that makes Innovo changed hands a few years ago.
Everyone had been fine and, about four months after the company was bought
out, everyone started having terrible stomach problems. First we were told
by the company that we must have gotten a bag of food that had been
"burned" (I wondered about quality control at that point) but the problem
continued and a dog food distributor suggested that the ingredients may be
the same as always but not the same quality that the previous company had
used. We'll never know what happened but we had to change to a different
food then.

We found out that Ginger has crystals in her urine and that was
contributing to her UTI's. Our vet told us to give her vitamin C once a day
and add a little water to her food to make sure that she stays well
hydrated. So Ginger gets 1000 mg vit C every morning along with a little
water in her food and she hasn't had a UTI in almost two years. Apparently
the vit C does something to the acidity of the urine and helps prevent
crystals. You might want to ask your vet about it.

My daughter had knee surgery so she and the mastiffs are here for at least
a month while she recovers. We know that Sasha, the 175 pound mastiff, must
have some sort of immunodeficiency with all her allergies and illnesses
that she has had. She has recently started pacing circles. For hours! My
daughter video taped her one time before they headed to the vet so that her
vet could see what Sasha was doing in case she stopped by the time they got
there. She is obviously in distress when she's doing this but no one can
figure out what is going on. It only happens once in a while but she did it
here yesterday and it's very distressing to watch. Her head was down, tail
down and she paced circles on and off for a couple of hours. Have any of
you had a dog do this? We just assumed she was having stomach trouble and
dumped liquid simethicone and Pepto down her but we really don't know if
that was her problem or not. I would love to hear from you if any of you
have had this experience with any of your dogs. I'm convinced she has
something going on in her brain but my daughter really can't afford to have
an MRI or CT scan done. We've never had a dog pace circles like this before
so we're a little freaked out.

The Houndettes and mastiffs are sending heart healing and get well drool to
all in need.

Jane & the Houndettes
Jersey, Shadow, Suzy & Ginger
with mastiffs Sasha & Brutus
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.dailydrool.org/pipermail/dailydrool-dailydrool.org/attachments/20130311/f8159521/attachment.htm>