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Fennoir
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09-02-2011, 12:14 PM

Changing from Hill's J/D Dog Food

Hello
I am after some advice.
We have a 6 year old labrador who 18 months ago had a ruptured cruciate ligament, she had surgery to have it repaired and doesn't seem to have had any ill effects - in fact you wouldn't have known she had had it.
We have been feeding her on Hill's J/D dog food since the operation which we thought would help her as the vet has advised that she may have problems with the joint when she gets older. She was on the reduced calorie version to help with her weight as well. over the last few months we noticed that she was scratching a fair bit and also rubbing her head on the floor (there has also been a minor amount of flakey skin). She has been to the vets several times about this and has been fulling checked and he can find nothing wrong.
We are due to order some more food and I wondered about an alternative and was surprised to see some of the reviews for the J/D basically saying it is made up of bad quality ingredients and could cause skin allergies - I am not saying it is that but it has set me thinking. I have been doing some investigation and have come up with many different types of food including grain free ones which seem to get very good feedback so am now totally confused.
We want to give her the best we can so was wondering whether anybody else could recommend anything better or give me some confidence back in the J/D.
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krlyr
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09-02-2011, 12:27 PM
Certain grains can certainly be a cause of skin allergies/problems, as can other ingredients in kibble.
Personally, I would totally avoid Hills unless I really had to. Even if my vet prescribed it for, say, a dog with kidney problems, I would be researching alternatives. Hills have the upperhand in that their prescription foods aren't available freely, thus they can charge high prices and people feel forced to pay these prices as they can't shop around. That's probably quite a cynical view, but the ingredients of the foods don't particularly scream "value for money" to me, and I think there are far better foods available, at similar or even lower budgets.
It may take a little more research - e.g. finding a food that suits your dog, weight-wise, but it's certainly possible. Lots of large breed varieties of food will supplement it with glucosamine etc. for the joints anyway, although you could just add this yourself (salmon oil, for example, is good for the joints, you can buy glucosamine-supplemented treats for the joints, etc)
I personally feed my dog raw so I'm not well versed on the most up to date premium kibbles but I'm sure someone will come along with some brand recommendations soon. If you have a particular budget then that may be useful to post so people know what sort of pricerange to recommend in.
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smokeybear
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09-02-2011, 12:35 PM
Hills j/d is a good example where dog food manufacturers have jumped on the bandwagon to provide a "special diet" for dogs.

You would be better off (both health wise and financially) to provide the dog with a better (IMHO) brand and ADD supplements for joints yourself.

Each dog is an individual and some of the supplements added to commercial foods are little more than useless for dogs eg flaxseed.

Give your dog Fish Body Oil capsules with vitamin E (much better than Cod Liver Oil as they do not contain Vitamins A and D which are fat soluble and they have a higher Omega 3 content) as an anti inflammatory, Vitamin C, you can then think of:

Glucosamine
Chondroitin
Rosehips
MSM
Green Lipped Mussel
Bromelain
Ginger

etc

Grain free dog foods:

Orijen
Applaws
JWB variety

Other premium brands

Arden Grange
Burns
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Fennoir
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09-02-2011, 12:46 PM
Thanks for those replies you are pretty much confirming what I have read. As you can imagine we are paying £50 plus a month for a bag of food so we are already paying a fair bit, so the cost thing isn't so much of a problem (within reason). I was wondering about changing the food and adding a supplement myself which maybe seems to be the way forward. I want to give her the best thing for her and don't want to buy Hill's basically for the name when something else would be better for her
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MXG
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09-02-2011, 02:16 PM
This is really interesting as we are due to start a Hill's prescription diet this weekend for Ted. Vet advised a 6 week trial because of constant ear infections (every 6 weeks or so). Are there any other hypo allergenic foods out there that anyone would recommend over Hill's? Another flatcoat owner talked to me about Royal Canin - anyone had experience with this? It'd be good to go to vets appointment on Sat armed with some knowlegde!! (other than the confusing stuff on the internet!!)
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krlyr
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09-02-2011, 02:40 PM
You could always try going back to the very basics - cooked chicken or fish, with rice or potato. The idea is that you feed something he's not had in his diet before, so if the kibble he's on is chicken based, feed fish, if it's got rice in it, feed potato. It's obviously not a balanced diet so not suitable long-term but the idea is that because you're feeding such basic ingredients, you can identify whether they're causing an allergy/intolerance and then slowly introduce new foods, one at a time.
Alternatively I know of several people who've switched to raw feeding and had great success with it stopping ear problems, but not all vets are in favour of raw feeding.
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smokeybear
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09-02-2011, 02:42 PM
Hypoallergenic is an overused and misunderstood term and whilst many dog foods are labelled thus the only TRULY hypoallergenic foods out there which are guaranteed not to trigger an allergy are those such as Hills z/d where the proteins have been hydrolised to avoid an allergic reaction.

These diets are very expensive.

The INGREDIENTS are not any better than their regular food (predominantly maize) but because of this process the allergies are not triggered.

I rehomed a dog with chronic ear infections (and I mean chronic) after going on raw he never had another one in the 18 months I had him.

You do not HAVE to go raw, but I would look at feeding a grain free diet first as IME it is grains that cause yeast overgrowths at the heart of most ear infections.

Orijen would be my food of choice (after raw) it is not cheap, BUT if the situation improved you could then move onto a similar product such as Applaws or JWB grain free which is much cheaper.

In addition I would feed the dog probiotics daily which "eat yeast" I find Healthspan capsules the most effective and they do not, like others, require refrigeration.

Live yoghurt is fine, but most does not survive the journey through the stomach.

HTH
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patsyd
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09-02-2011, 02:42 PM
Hi, I'm a newbie here. I also have a female yellow Lab (7 y/o) who has the same problem: she ruptured the cranial cruciate ligament, but we decided the surgery wouldn't be suitable at the time (she has liver problems-high ALT, obesity-60 kg and leishmaniasis-treated with amphotericin B and on allopurinol). Her vet changed her diet to Hills r/d (to loose weight) and she developed vesical stones and started scratching and rubbing her face on the floor, then we changed to Hills k/d and my dog stopped eating! She never had problems eating any "dog foods" before, but now she refuses all of them (tried many other brands). I'm feeding her low-purine meats, vegetables and fruits, but I'm not sure this is a balanced nutrition. She also takes glucosamine/chondroitin/magnesium/vit C supplement for the joint problem and milk thistle for the liver. When she walks too much her hock joint gets swollen and I give her Previcox for a week. I don't want to give her so many drugs (she's spitting them now), maybe the fish oil/vit E is a good option?
I think Labs have a difficult time dealing with drugs, they seem to be highly sensitive to side effects including allergy, and maybe a natural diet with supplements to boost their immune system should be the best choice, so my question is: which diet is more appropriate?
I'm sorry if this is confusing, I'm not a native English speaker
Oh, and as I live in Brazil, most of these brands you named are unavailable!
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Fennoir
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09-02-2011, 03:51 PM
Orijen was the food I was looking at although it is slightly more expensive that the Hill's if you add up the vets bills I am sure it will more than even itself out. I will also look into the supplements etc, it will be very interesting to see what difference it makes to her skin and scratching. It is really helpful to know that other people are having the same issues with the product.
Not sure if it helps but another product I found that was Grain free is Wellness Core which I couldn't find online at any UK stores but it maybe available in Brazil. Sorry can't be anymore help but I am just at the beginning of testing these new things out. Hopefully we get good results.
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patsyd
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09-02-2011, 06:18 PM
Yes Fennoir, I hope we get good results. I'll try to find the grain free or go natural. My problem is bigger because she has renal issues due to the allopurinol daily intake and cannot eat much purine rich food, so I guess my choices are more restrict. I wish they could talk...
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