Hi Tamara!
I have a similar dog as you and she also suffered with pancreatitis. For our Carine Terrier we had to do a lot of trial and error to figure out what was best for her. Firstly, she was overweight, 19lbs; 4.5lbs overweight in November of 2015. She is now 14.6 and staying steady. One reason she might of lost so much weight was because she had EPI from the pancreatitis episode in 2015. So she wasn’t absorbing as many nutrients. We also focused on exercise a lot more.
In regards to PANCREATITIS, we put her on a strict diet for about a month after her episode. Chicken boiled twice, white rice, sometimes a starchy food like Yam or sweet potatoes steamed and/or boiled. We should of supplemented with vitamins at this time but we were a little ignorant. Anyway, after this we bought HONEST KITCHEN Zeal Meal fish formula and HONEST KITCHEN veggie formula which is just a topping if you feed her protein such as fish boiled or chicken boiled. For 5 months we have been on a regime feeding her twice a day, either the zeal meal, ground up in a blender for a sec. Or the Honest Kitchen veggie topping dehydrated one. Both need hot water and let sit for 5min. The veggie one is mixed with fish, chicken or 95% lean twice boiled beef. We introduce more fat like coconut oil which doesn’t require the pancreas to work like other fats in small amounts.
NO TABLE SCRAPS PERIOD!! Supplements are what saved our dog. She has more energy than she did when she was 7. For every meal and what I think is the most important for dogs suffering with pancreatitis is an enzyme replacement. You can get them from your vet but we just use the vegan powder formula on amazon. Not too much money and lasts a year. We sprinkle 1/2 a teaspoon on her food for nutrient absorption and so her pancreas doesn’t have to work as hard. The brand is called Nusentia Enzyme Miracle.
Other supplements include pancreatrophin from standard process, which also aids in her digestion, paraplex and enteric powder all from standard process. We barely use the last two.
I hope this helps a lot, we had to go through the same thing, it’s important to stay low fat, but not too low and to add in enzymes slowly.
