I have a 14 year old dog that caught kennel cough last summer. It seemed to pass within a few days, and all the other dogs are 100% recovered. Except for slowing down a little, he was fine over the winter, but since the start of summer, he’s had ongoing respiratory problems. It started with a URI in early June, which was treated with antibiotics without much improvement. That led the Vet to believe it could have been fungal in origin, but the antifungal meds made him very sick, so we were forced to discontinue it. I was given Veterinary permission to try echinacea as a last resort, which helped more than I expected it would. I started cooking for him too, but had to stop that because for some reason, he urinates rivers and was leaking urine in the house on a homemade diet – his kidney values were normal, btw. So he’s back on Purina and still hasn’t shaken off this infection 100%.
Now, I was recently told by another dog owner who thinks she Knows Everything that food is to blame and only expensive kibble with probiotics would cure him. I thought maybe the probiotics and “extras” might be a help in this instance, considering he’s old and his immune system seems to be run down. I started looking at dry food with pre/probiotics added, and realized two things.
First, many of the probiotics are not beneficial bacteria but aspergillus niger, which I know can balance out intestinal flora, but is essentially giving the dog black mold. Incidentally, the Vet believes the dog initially got sick in the first place not from kennel cough, but from eating sticks and grass growing in a section of my yard that became contaminated with green/black mold after a neighbor’s sick tree dropped mold spores on my property. This is a common cause of blastomycosis, in fact, which my dog was checked for. I can’t understand how giving fungus to a dog with a system overrun with it could ever be beneficial. I would even think it dangerous to give on a long term basis, lest an overgrowth ever occur. Secondly, I realized after looking through at least a dozen foods that every time one or more of my dogs had a noticeable change in temperament after a food switch (this occurred on three different brands over the years), it happened to be one that included pre or probiotics. Could there have possibly been a connection?
So my long winded way of asking a question is could a food change help a dog battling chronic systemic fungal infection, and would one with probiotics help or hurt this condition? Thanks!
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