Impacted anal glands (advice please)

We have had hooch at the vets. He had been licking his penis alot more than usual, and was abit off his food. On friday morning i looked and his penis was very red and angry looking.
So off to the vets we went, after alot of questions and an examination it turned out hoochies anal glands were impacted.
There had'nt been any smell or other indication, but i still felt like a bad owner. poor babe.
Anyway the vet sorted them out and we went back today just to have them and him checked. only one of them needed doing again.
The vet informed me that once a dog has these done they are more likely to need to have them emptied on a regular basis. If it does become troublesome the vet has said that they can be removed.
Has anyones dog had them removed?
What other treatments are there?
Does it always follow that the anal glands will keep filling up?
He also said in some dogs they will need doing every 2 weeks. Is that right?

I'm sorry I can't give any proper advice on it, only that at the start of this year my boys had trouble with theirs. It's never been looked into but they had to be emptied 2 or 3 times and the vet told us that as they'd been done the chances are they would continue to need doing which could be quite costly. Instead she told us to give them each a handful of bran flakes with their food each day! Touch wood, they haven't had to be emptied again. I have spoken to 2 other vets at our surgery just to make sure it was OK to be doing this long term and they totally agreed that it's fine.

I know lots of people have success by adding more fibre to the diet to firm up the poos - firmer poo helps express the anal glands as the dog goes to the toilet. Bran flakes as mentioned above are quite often used, or feeding a raw chicken wing a day - the bone firms up the poo. Some people find switching to a raw diet completely stops any issues whatsoever.

Yes I have had two dogs that have had thiers removed and it was the best thing I evr done for them.
Sometimes the anal glands are slightly out of position so can't empty properly themselves so you get problems and all the fibre in the world won't help in this situation.
All I can say is if you do end up having them removed make sure whoever does the surgery is eperienced at it as there is a lot of nerves around that area and if the surgeon is not experienced you can end up with a bowel incontinent dog.
With an experienced surgeon there shouldn't be a problem and my dogs had an easy recovery after the op no different to any other op.

hi

no it doest always follow that you will have probs with ag's and the last thing i would to is even consider surgery because of a fe incidents of full ag's

my lobo has an arkwardly placed sac so sometimes he has a prob emptying it...sometimes a few times a year sometimes never in a year..he has had a couple of abccesses in his life...still wouldnt opt for surgery.

did your dog have a slightly loose belly?

We've tried bran flakes but hooch turned his nose up at anything with it in(spoilt begger) What about weetabix?

chicken wing sounds good, i'm sure he would eat that. do you defrost it or give it frozen?

Just wondering bev why did you decide to go the operation route, did they have to have them empties alot?

His poo's are usually quite firm, just sometimes a little soft and runny. they have been loose though the last couple of days, but i think that might be from the stress of going to the vets and having someone mess around with his back end.

Yes often they were bad again within days also they started to thicken and toughen making the hole in the gland so small it made them harder and harder to empty. One gland in my girl actually couldn't be emptied without a lot of pain and discomfort anymore it had become so thickend with the constant problem.
I just wish I had done it sooner before they got to that stage.
I will add they never had loose poo it was always well formed and firm the anal glands were just wrongly set to empty themselves.