Hi Ryan,
Triglycerides over 2000 yikes! I have some experience with this problem. When triglycerides are this high they can result in a variety of problems. Intestinal discomfort, vomiting, diarrhea, behavior abnormalities, seizures and pancreatitis have all been reported. This is serious stuff! It makes me wonder if the intermittent pain your dog is having is in any way related to abdominal discomfort from high triglycerides.
From what I gather you temporally put your dog on a chicken and rice diet and then the triglycerides were normal. So the good news is that it appears diet responsive. Chicken breast and rice is a low fat diet if that is what you were feeding. To know how much you need to feed you’d feed an equivalent calories to the former diet. Rice is ~200 kcal /cup for steamed white rice and chicken breast is about 120 kcals for 100 grams
What you absolutely do not want to do is follow the well meaning but misguided recommendation from spycar to feed a high fat diet (20% was rec,) low carb diet! This would be a recipe for disaster ..literally.
If a secondary cause (for example hormonal problems) is found and treated than feeding a low fat diet may not be needed. But feeding a low fat diet is the foundation of treatment of primary hypertriglyceridemia.
It looks like your vet is on top of this by recommending a low fat diet. If your dog doesn’t like the first commercial low fat ask for a different one. You’ll need a diet significantly lower in fat than the one your dog was on when the high level was found. Work with your vet.. this is a serious problem!
Some dogs can use commercial diets usually low fat vet diets but others need to work with a nutritionist for ultra low fat diet. Balance it dot com has some semi customized recipes if you need to go that route.
