[Mike E]

Well, I’m now pretty much 100% sure it was the bigger kibble from the sportmix… I wetted his food for a week and he’s fine. I switched over to Victor Premium again with the smaller kibble it has and he’s been fine. We still had 3/4 of a bag of the Sportmix so it’s being fed to his much bigger and more voracious “sister” who gobbles it up like a piggy. I gave the sister her 2 scoops of sportmix this morning and am off to grab the victor the our little choker and he comes RACING in and steals some of her food, gulping it whole in front of my eyes. Guess what. he got a piece caught in his throat and started wheezing again (even did the “stretch neck out near the floor as he tried to swallow it down). I shoo’d him away from his sister’s food and fed him his Victor… flawless…. It seems the sportmix is JUST big enough for him to swallow (it’s not massive) but also just beg enough to get stuck vs. the small bites that Victor is…. So smaller bites it is

• This reply was modified 7 years, 11 months ago by Mike E. Reason: spelling

[Mike E]

yeah, I’ve been looking them again. I REALLY liked my Victor premium, but we got it for a STEAL at our local feed store ($35 for a 40 lb bag, chewy has it for $50 🙁 ), but when they went away the only other feed store had it for like $45+ tax. I noticed Chewy has the victor beef for $38 which isn’t too bad. I may have to grab a couple of bags from there since they both did so wonderfully on Victor when we had it. I’ll have to try it.Thanks!

[Mike E]

yup, he’s always been a picky eater so we ALWAYS wetted his food or doctored it with dog gravy for most of his life. he just liked the taste of the Sportmix on it’s own so we stopped wetting it a few months ago out of laziness.

[Mike E]

I’ll keep an eye on him. I’ve been watching every meal like a hawk and I noticed the pattern (remember I’ve only noticed this a couple times over months of watching him eat). He’ll start to wolf food whole, then it’s like something “catches” and he tries huffing as he chews trying to swallow. The second he gets any water, any moisture on the food it vanishes. if I add in a little broth or water or wet food, or coconut oil to the mix it’s a non issue. He won’t have the issue to begin with.

I’ll of course let the vet know if it gets worse or his next checkup, that’s for sure, but right now I’m leaning towards tiny 26 lb dog and pieces of kibble that meant for a bigger dog. switching to small bites seems to have helped the last few days. before he would have to break down and chew almost every bite (sometimes he tries to swallow whole but he almost always ends up chewing about 1/4 way through the meal as he realizes “oops, too big”), now he eats at a steadier pace with the smaller food

as for sudden change. I didn’t always WATCH him when he ate (many times he’s in the bedroom eating his food while his sister is outside in the living room eating where we are …she’s a piggy and will eat her food, his food, the bowl, and has no compunction stealing his dinner while this little guy looks on mournfully), but for the first year and a third of his existence he ate a much smaller bited kibble. we switched foods when we lost our distributor for Victor Premimu (which has really small kibble in general) and went with he sportmix since Tractor Supply started carrying it and we live a few miles away from one. So it’s an issue that cropped up ONCE WE SWITCHED FOODS.

• This reply was modified 8 years ago by Mike E.
• This reply was modified 8 years ago by Mike E.

[Mike E]

dead certain. It’s very obviously like he’s TRYING to swallow something that’s dry and hard to swallow. the minute I add liquid to a dish or moisten it in the slightest it vanishes.

[Mike E]

it’s weird. he doesn’t scarf. he’s a single kibble at a time dog. and the symptoms don’t persist. they only persist till he gets a little liquid in his food and it seems to wash away anything causing him trouble swallowing, which means he can finish his meal without a cough or wheeze.

I’m going to start pre-soaking his food and also try experimenting with small bites food for him alone (I live 4 miles from a tractor supply so I can grab a 5 lb bag of 4health small bites to experiment) … he gets soup broth in his kibble half the time anyways so that’s probably why I don’t see it more often. it’s only a rarity and ONLY on completely dry meal. I was just double checking to see if I was missing anything important. But like you said,

[Mike E]

my dr. has never done that. he just writes me a script for whatever medication my pet needs and says “fill it wherever you want”

[Mike E]

correct. The heartgard warranty is actually a PITA to to deal with (had to see people TRY and get merick to cover them for years when I was a tech, maybe 10% of them actually succeeded) so I have no problem with that. Heartworm is a VERY rare thing in my part of the country, I only do that because of the pyrantel included for de-worming tactics. Honestly, My dogs have gone to ACTUAL vets maybe 2-3 times over the last 10 years TOTAL. Otherwise they go to the low cost vaccine clinics for spaying/neutering and their every 3 year vaccinations (well, besides the puppy vacs) or else do it myself from the feed store (when I was close to one). I was raised country and even though I make sure my dogs get their meds and get their yearly fecal and blood tests done it’s almost NEVER by a vet who wants to charge $70 for an exam plus 50% more for the tests than what I can get at the low cost clinic down the road who has been great to us. Hell, even my vet doesn’t care. we took him in for his initial “brand new puppy” exam and our vet recommended that we use them instead of him for shots and heartworm stuff. His exact words were that since they don’t really make more than a few bucks off of the injections and almost ZERO money of of heartworm meds it was cheaper to go that route and just bring them in when they get sick and need a real vet’s care.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 11 months ago by Mike E.

[Mike E]

yeahhhhh, sorry but most vets know JACK about the meds they sell or the foods they prescribe. worked as a tech for years and can tell you this with 100% certainty (hell, we talk about it all the time with the crap they try and upsell with food like Science Diet *shudder). Heartgard is a name brand for a dog chew with a certain mcg dose of ivermectin and a certain dose of pyrantel injected inside. That’s like saying ONLY buy advil if your dr. says he likes that one vs. Costco Ibuprofen. if a medication has the EXACT amounts of ivermectin and pyrantel then it will work fine. You can literally measure the mcg’s and mg’s of Iver and Pyrantel and do as good as heartworm with 100% certainty. Iverheart has been scientifically proven to be the equivalent as Heartgard, and the same with Tri-heart…. I hadn’t heard of Pet trust plus so I asked about it. I bought my Tri-heart from Costco for years because when asked, my vet said verbatim “it’s the same thing as heartgard, just a generic, most ivermectin based pills virtually identical”, and told me to buy wherever I found them the cheapest.

again, this dialog is about the Pet Trust plus brand and it’s efficacy, not anything else. hell, if I had quick access to a local feed store that I didn’t have to drive 40 minutes away from, I’d just pick up the ivermectin myself along with some Pyrantel and do the dosing as I did growing up with our other dogs (country boy through and through)

(even though it’s kind of moot, I’m heading to the vet at our local low cost vaccine/spay/neuter clinic where he will get his normally yearly test and exam + the Tri-heart, which again is highly regarded as one of the best Iver/Pyr generics out there. My costco recently stopped selling Tri-heart a year back so I had to get Heartgard for a bloated name brand price for last year and wasn’t able to find another place that sold the Tri-heart locally. I didn’t want to buy online but instead from a licensed pharmacy or vet clinic and I was having a heart time locating one that sold Tri-heart or iverheart plus so I was asking about Pet Trust Plus which can be bought from Walmart/Sam’s club pharmacies)

• This reply was modified 8 years, 11 months ago by Mike E.
• This reply was modified 8 years, 11 months ago by Mike E.

[Mike E]

I wasn’t asking about online pharmacies out of the country. I was asking about the PetTrust plus which is sold via sams club and walmart. your average heart worm med is nothing but Ivermectin and Pyrantel mixed (something I could do myself if I wanted) so I was just asking if the generic Pet trust + had a good rep like Iverheart and Tri-heart did. However, I found out one of the vaccine and neuter/spay clinics near my place uses Tri-heart as the one they sell and it’s just about as cheap as the Pet trust plus, and the Tri-heart has a great track record so I’ll be going today to get his heartworm test + years supply of pills

[Author]

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