Hi DieselJunki –
It looks to me like your pup is knuckling over. You breeder gave you horrible advice, supplementing with calcium and reducing the protein will not help and could potentially make the issue worse. Calcium needs to be in balance with phosphorus – the ratio needs to be between 1:1 and 2:1 calcium to phosphorus. Commercial foods have a balanced ratio, so by supplementing with addition calcium you will likely throw the ratio off. You never ever want to supplement a balanced diet with calcium (unless advised by a veterinarian) and especially not for a growing puppy. Too much calcium in the diet actually contributes to developmental orthopedic diseases, such as knuckling over. Knuckling over, along with excess calcium, can be caused by overfeeding, having your pup walk around on inappropriate flooring (slippery floors) or by feeding low quality foods containing nutrients that have a low bio-availability. The good news is, if this is knuckling over (which I suspect it is) it can easily be reversed with no permanent damage. Get your dog on a balanced quality food with appropriate calcium levels and monitor intake (DO NOT overfeed). Also, get your pup to a vet asap! The vet should check to see if the dog has any parasites or underlying issues that could be causing nutrient deficiencies and the legs may need to be splinted for awhile. The following is some info on knuckling over:
http://vri.cz/docs/vetmed/51-2-71.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2905020/ .
You may also want to check out the articles posted on large breed puppy nutrition (if you haven’t already):
/forums/topic/large-and-giant-breed-puppy-nutrition/
1 month, 1 week ago
