[Harpers Mom]

So Harper has been on Merrick dog food now for about 2 months. She has done exceptionally well on the Texas beef and duck formulas. But all of a sudden in the past week or so she has gone from having a bowel movement once or twice a day to 5 or 6 times a day. Her stool was firm but not rock hard, now it’s very soft, almost diarrhea . We have been adding pumpkin to her food the past 3 days and still no change. I am about to change food to see if it helps. We are think Fromm beef feretta, or earthborn great planing feast. Or victor salmon formula, Any suggestions?

• This topic was modified 11 years, 11 months ago by Harpers Mom.

[crazy4cats]

Hi Harper’s Mom-
I am using Victor Grain Free right now. I’ve recently experienced soft stools also previously. They are doing very well on the Victor so far. The first three ingredients are beef meal, sweet potatoes and chicken meal. I am going to try their salmon formula next. I’ll report how they do on it. I wish you luck. I didn’t know feeding a dog could be so complicated. Lol!

[pugmomsandy]

I tried giving my fosters Merrick classic and grain free but had to cut it with something lower in protein as they didn’t tolerate it. They always do well on Nutrisource, though, grain and grain free.

[Mom2Cavs]

Sometimes it takes about 2-3 months to find out if a food works for your dog. At least it’s been that way for mine. Sometimes, though, I can tell immediately but other times it takes awhile. I am feeding Annamaet now and the dogs are doing great! I just got some Victor Yukon and Ocean, and lots of samples of the Senior, GF, and Adult. I plan on a rotation of Annamaet, Victor, and Dr. Tim’s and Fromm 4Star. Laverne may not be able to eat some of them due to them having poultry, but we’ll see. If not, she’ll just eat the ones with fish.

• This reply was modified 11 years, 11 months ago by Mom2Cavs.

[DogFoodie]

Hi Harper’s Mom,

I’ve never tried Merrick, bought some once and returned it after hearing about others who had problems with loose stool from the product. Sometimes when I first try a food, it’ll seem to be working fine for a while and then the symptoms slowly begin to develop over time. I tell you, the thing that helped me the most was this, having cataloged all of the foods in my stash by best buy date, I use them one at a time and take detailed notes of how things are going. I keep it all in a spreadsheet and it helped me identify my dog’s intolerances. Your pup may, or may not have an intolerance, but there’s no better time to begin keeping notes and saving the ingredient panel from the bag of food you were feeding (ingredients change so don’t rely on the being able to find the recipe online). You may find that suddenly a common ingredient pops up like how fish and fish oils are added to so many foods, even those that aren’t “fish-based,” but they also happen to be my dog’s intolerance.

I would look to switch your pup to a protein other than beef or duck and, like you mentioned, choose another brand for this round of your rotation.

Also, one other thing I just thought is this, I’ve never had luck with duck for either of my two dogs. Both of them developed loose stools after a period of time. I was using Back to Basics duck which contains a lot of organ meat and I wasn’t certain if the reaction was to the duck or the organ meat. I believe I tried duck again sometime later, but wasn’t keeping notes then or I could tell you for sure!

[Harpers Mom]

Thank you everyone for the input! This morning we went and bought Harper a bag of victor ocean. We have to be careful with protein sources because she is allergic to chicken, turkey pork and now I am adding duck to that list. Also most grain. After the victor I am going to try to see how she handles lamb. As of now the only protein sources she can have is beef and venison. I never realized how complicated all this was!

I suspect she may have a white potato sensitivity. She has done well on one some food with it, but others not so much. For now we will just continue trial and error till we find foods to work In her rotation.

[Mom2Cavs]

Although people have said that having chicken fat in a food should not bother a dog with chicken allergies, just be sure to note that Victor Ocean does have that ingredient in it. I’m hoping it’ll work for Laverne. The Annamaet Option doesn’t have any poultry and it’s working great, so we’ll see when I rotate what happens. Keeping notes does help! Keep us updated. 🙂

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