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El Mero Mero
Oct 13, 2001

Thin Privilege posted:

I have tried various feeders before when I had to go out of town overnight but they just stuff themselves and have horrible diarrhea due to that so that’s not an option.

When we switched to an automatic feeder it fixed a ton of lovely cat behavior (whining, waking us up in the morning, overeating, etc)for us since the cat no longer looks to us as the food gods that can be bothered into submission.

Same portion, twice a day, at the same time morning and night.

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Turtlicious
Sep 17, 2012

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
My cat tries to get fed 6 times a day. It's just a cat thing.

MikeyTsi
Jan 11, 2009

I'm trying to find a low phosphorus/magnesium content food for my dogs that isn't something that's loaded with by-products, is there a list somewhere that might have this information?

I've been feeding Orijen, but they changed their formulation so the content they list is now "at least" .9% instead of "up to", so I think I need to roll them to something higher quality.

Thin Privilege
Jul 8, 2009
IM A STUPID MORON WITH AN UGLY FACE AND A BIG BUTT AND MY BUTT SMELLS AND I LIKE TO KISS MY OWN BUTT
Gravy Boat 2k
They’re definitely putting crack cocaine in this new food. It reeks of fresh fish and they are obsessed and omg. They lick the bowls clean like 3x. The only cat that isn’t cracked-out nuts is the one on prescription food. He’s still chill and normal.

I just checked their weights again and they haven’t changed at all so.... crack cocaine in cat food is allowable?

BAGS FLY AT NOON
Apr 6, 2011

A Soft Nylon Bag
We have been fostering a 4 month old puppy for about 2.5 weeks now. He was quite underweight when got him from the rescue (admittedly not unusual), however now after almost 3 weeks of 3 meals a day of quality wet and dry food, plus occasional treats, he’s still quite thin, if not just as thin. We’re feeding him at least what the food packaging recommends if not a little more. He’s otherwise healthy, happy and active. His wellness visit at the vet went fine with no major issues and he’s just finishing up a round of antibiotics for giardia/coccidia. We’re concerned maybe about tapeworm or some other digestive parasite, but I haven’t seen any signs.

EVG
Dec 17, 2005

If I Saw It, Here's How It Happened.
My new dog has what is colloquially referred to as ‘scooty booty’. A couple vet tech visits have shown that it’s not anal glands, and their other idea about possibly itchiness from fleas was also a bust (on frontline, no fleas). Theoretically it could be a food allergy.

She is a 45lb Aussie mix and eats Taste of the Wild dry, daily Kongs with food mixed with PB, and the occasional porker roll (3xweek). She also gets occasional misc. treats and cookies but mostly grain free.

Any idea?

MikeyTsi
Jan 11, 2009

EVG posted:

My new dog has what is colloquially referred to as ‘scooty booty’. A couple vet tech visits have shown that it’s not anal glands, and their other idea about possibly itchiness from fleas was also a bust (on frontline, no fleas). Theoretically it could be a food allergy.

She is a 45lb Aussie mix and eats Taste of the Wild dry, daily Kongs with food mixed with PB, and the occasional porker roll (3xweek). She also gets occasional misc. treats and cookies but mostly grain free.

Any idea?

I assume they've tested the dog's poop for parasites?

GoodBee
Apr 8, 2004


My dog has gotten the scooty booty when she ate a piece of hair and didn't poop out the whole thing. That's not a continuous thing though.

EVG
Dec 17, 2005

If I Saw It, Here's How It Happened.

MikeyTsi posted:

I assume they've tested the dog's poop for parasites?

Yep, our day care requires a test every 6 months.

GoodBee
Apr 8, 2004


Does anyone feed Castor & Pollux?

I want to be lazy and feed my dogs something decent that I can pick up at the closest place to me.

Edit: Dogfoodadvisor rates it lower than the Blue Buffalo Wilderness dry, which is what I've been feeding them. I guess I'll stick with that and just pick up a couple cans of the wet if I don't make it to the store when I should.

GoodBee fucked around with this message at 23:04 on Apr 3, 2018

CRISPYBABY
Dec 15, 2007

by Reene
This is kind of a weird question and might be more appropriate for the general cat thread, but what the gently caress is up with Amazon.ca's pet food/supply prices? I'm moving cross country and ordering some food/litter to a friends place for them to take care of my cats for a day while I set up my new apartment. I've found a couple that are at pet store prices from the original companies, but like 90% of the listings I'm looking at for dry food and litter are like, 400% of the MSRP. 10 pound bags I buy at a pet store for 60 bucks being put up for 200 bucks. poo poo like that. You have to dig through 50 of those ads to find like, one bag that's actually from the original seller at a normal price.

PetOnly.ca seems like a decent place to order stuff for what it's actually supposed to cost, except their website seems to be going at 1/10 speed for me right now.

CRISPYBABY fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Apr 16, 2018

dank glitterqueef
Nov 6, 2005

So my 11 year old cat just hit 18 pounds, and my vet has recommended potentially putting him on a prescription low cal diet. Currently he's getting half a cup of Blue Buffalo weight control dry food per day, plus a little bit of Friskies canned food, both split into two separate meals a day. He has arthritis and isn't super physically active, so getting him to really play a whole lot is difficult, even when he has interest in a toy (he's on Cosequin which has helped a little). He also tends to get a little rough with his sister, particularly around mealtimes/when he's hungry, and we don't want to exacerbate that by physically giving him less and having him be hungrier more often, so the vet seemed to think that our best bet might be to put him on a prescription low calorie diet. I'm not super thrilled about the options they have in terms of ingredient quality, but I was wondering if anyone here has any more insight. The ones they offered as options were Hills R/D, Purina OM, and Royal Canin's low fat/high fiber formula. Any thoughts/recommendations?

dank glitterqueef fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Jun 30, 2018

Thin Privilege
Jul 8, 2009
IM A STUPID MORON WITH AN UGLY FACE AND A BIG BUTT AND MY BUTT SMELLS AND I LIKE TO KISS MY OWN BUTT
Gravy Boat 2k

dank glitterqueef posted:

So my 11 year old cat just hit 18 pounds, and my vet has recommended potentially putting him on a prescription low cal diet. Currently he's getting half a cup of Blue Buffalo weight control dry food per day, plus a little bit of Friskies canned food, both split into two separate meals a day. He has arthritis and isn't super physically active, so getting him to really play a whole lot is difficult, even when he has interest in a toy (he's on Cosequin which has helped a little). He also tends to get a little rough with his sister, particularly around mealtimes/when he's hungry, and we don't want to exacerbate that by physically giving him less and having him be hungrier more often, so the vet seemed to think that our best bet might be to put him on a prescription low calorie diet. I'm not super thrilled about the options they have in terms of ingredient quality, but I was wondering if anyone here has any more insight. The ones they offered as options were Hills R/D, Purina OM, and Royal Canin's low fat/high fiber formula. Any thoughts/recommendations?

Did you and vet calculate calories of the food? It is a pain in the rear end, especially since some don’t post calories on their food, but the cat has to eat a deficit to lose weight (like humans). There’s tons of calculators online that’ll say what # you need to maintain weight; basically, go lower than those and your cat will lose weight even if they don’t want to move around much.

Check out the Butterscotch thread, that cat was huge and lost like half his body, maybe PM the OP for tips.

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3768887

Wroughtirony
May 14, 2007



I had great success with both my fat cat and my skinny cat when I switched to raw food. It's a bit controversial, but it has worked out really well for us. I use Darwin's, which is pre-packaged and designed for cats- it's basically just ground raw chicken or turkey with mineral supplements to make it nutritionally complete. It gets shipped frozen to us as vacuum sealed 8-oz packets, and we just defrost a few in the fridge at a time. You have to take some extra precautions with it to make sure you don't cross-contaminate your kitchen, but it's pretty easy. We just have a designated fridge drawer for the food and we serve it on single-use paper plates.

It doesn't have any of the fillers that are necessary for traditional dry or canned food, and it's closer to what cats eat in the wild. Our fat cat went from almost 17 pounds to 11 pounds over the course of a year, and our skinny cat maintained her weight. Their coats got softer and their energy levels increased. We've been feeding them Darwin's for about a year and a half now and it's totally worth the cost. It's not a solution for everyone, but it's been great for us.

Gothmog1065
May 14, 2009
How does 4Health (Tractor Supply's brand) dry food rank? It seems to be Acceptable or so. I'm thinking of switching to a half/half (Wet/dry) diet for my cats. The 4health seems to be well recommended by the local vet, and it's less than half the price of Wellness Core that I currently feed them. Would that be a decent replacement using that wet and dry combo to replace Wellness Core dry?

GoodBee
Apr 8, 2004


What are some good resources for comparing food brands?

The OP is from 2013 and now there are new brands and some old brands (may?) have changed formulas. Last time I looked I used dogfoodadvisor and it seemed fine. A couple more sites pop up on a search but who knows which one to look at.

Someone make a meta pet food rating site and aggregate all the other site, tia

nunsexmonkrock
Apr 13, 2008

Gothmog1065 posted:

How does 4Health (Tractor Supply's brand) dry food rank? It seems to be Acceptable or so. I'm thinking of switching to a half/half (Wet/dry) diet for my cats. The 4health seems to be well recommended by the local vet, and it's less than half the price of Wellness Core that I currently feed them. Would that be a decent replacement using that wet and dry combo to replace Wellness Core dry?

To me the ingredients seem mostly fine, but the protein seems a bit too low, if you look at Wellness Core (depending on the version it's about 45% protein compared to the 34% in 4health)- but if that is what your vet recommends go with it - s/he know better about your pet than any of us do.

Ask your vet about Taste of the Wild: Rock Mountain formula and Solid Gold Indigo Moon if you can both have protein in the 40%'s and are cheaper then Wellness Core - but again go with what your vet says.

Edit: The ingredient "Egg Product" kind of puts me off too - what part of the egg, what animal does the egg come from, etc...

nunsexmonkrock fucked around with this message at 08:04 on Jul 28, 2018

Kia Soul Enthusias
May 9, 2004

zoom-zoom
Toilet Rascal

MikeyTsi posted:

I'm trying to find a low phosphorus/magnesium content food for my dogs that isn't something that's loaded with by-products, is there a list somewhere that might have this information?

I've been feeding Orijen, but they changed their formulation so the content they list is now "at least" .9% instead of "up to", so I think I need to roll them to something higher quality.

This is an old post so don't know if you're still following but was curious if you found something. My dog potentially has early stage renal failure and was hoping for something better than Hill's. Thank you.

GoodBee
Apr 8, 2004


I haven't looked for one for dogs but there was a page where they broke out phosphorous content of cat foods. It varies by flavor, not brand. Maybe someone has done that for dogs?

I was looking for something my old man cat would eat after he quit eating the prescription diet. I'd stick with prescription if your dog will eat it since those are actually tested. My old man didn't live too much longer after he wouldn't eat the prescription stuff. I did that under the vet's supervision along with giving him fluids. We were pretty much just trying to make him more comfortable at that point.

MikeyTsi
Jan 11, 2009

Charles posted:

This is an old post so don't know if you're still following but was curious if you found something. My dog potentially has early stage renal failure and was hoping for something better than Hill's. Thank you.

https://www.farmina.com/us/eshop-dog/dog-food/8-farmina-vet-life-canine.html

Kia Soul Enthusias
May 9, 2004

zoom-zoom
Toilet Rascal

Thank you! I hadn't heard of that brand before. They have something that looks really good.

MikeyTsi
Jan 11, 2009

Charles posted:

Thank you! I hadn't heard of that brand before. They have something that looks really good.

Note that their vet diets, like any vet diet, requires a prescription from a veterinarian.

Also depending on where you're located you'll probably need to order it as only a few chains carry Farmina and I haven't found any that actually stock the vet diets.

porkswordonboard
Aug 27, 2007
You should get that looked at

Gothmog1065 posted:

How does 4Health (Tractor Supply's brand) dry food rank? It seems to be Acceptable or so. I'm thinking of switching to a half/half (Wet/dry) diet for my cats. The 4health seems to be well recommended by the local vet, and it's less than half the price of Wellness Core that I currently feed them. Would that be a decent replacement using that wet and dry combo to replace Wellness Core dry?

This was probably an old post, but I'll put my two cents in. It's acceptable. Problem areas:

Rice, potatoes, barley etc: Cat's don't need grains or carbs, at all. They are Obligate Carnivores, meaning they must have meat and as much as possible. Luckily, the first two ingredients are meat - Chicken and chicken meal. The first ingredient is pure chicken, but here's the catch - they weigh the meat before they process it, to put it at the top of the list. In processing, the meat loses its water weight, and therefore would actually be further down the list as far as what percent is in the actual food. Chicken meal is a better ingredient than it sounds, as it includes offals - organ meats, high in vitamins and minerals. The downside is it can also include beaks, feathers, and less desirable chicken bits. The quality of the meal lays solely on the shoulders of the manufacturer, and can vary widely.

As nunsexmonkrock said, "egg product" is a bit questionable, as is "natural flavor" and "fish meal." Non-specific ingredients should be regarded warily.

In short: it's not a terrible food, but it's heavy in carbs and unnecessary ingredients. I wouldn't steer someone away from it if their pet liked it and it was within their price range, but I wouldn't recommend it either.



A note on vets: all, or most of their nutrition classes are taught by Hill's Science Diet, or a similar prescription brand. They are not educated on brands whatsoever. Think of it this way: they know that an animal with x condition requires y and z in their food. Hill's gives them it on a silver platter, and their formulas rarely change, so there's no impetus to self-teach about the constantly revolving brands out there. I had a friend, a recently graduated veterinarian, come to me to figure out what to feed her cat - she literally had no idea. Poor bastards are already stressed to the limit with the information they are trying to accumulate, so for most vets, it's low on the totem pole to research what may change tomorrow. The downside is that Hill's is, frankly...trash, in my opinion.

I'm about to go on a rant inspired by some of this stuff, so if you don't want to read it go ahead and skip. Keep in mind that IANAV, and have no degree in nutrition. I have worked with animals for 5 years, however, self-educated, spoken with vets I trust, and seen thousands of animals walk through my door. I've seen puppies and kittens reach adulthood and heard or seen the effects of the right food for the right animal. If you think I'm wrong about something, I'll take no offense whatsoever to criticism - I welcome it! What follows is purely my own understanding.

**If you trust your vet and they insist on a prescription diet, feel free to ask them about the issues below, but if they can explain why and still want you to do it then OBEY**

Let's look at Hill's! I picked a formula once recommended by a vet I no longer use, for my geriatric cat when he had a bladder infection.

Hill's Science Diet Urinary for Cats

Chicken, Whole Grain Corn, Corn Gluten Meal, Whole Grain Wheat, Brewers Rice, Pork Fat, Chicken Meal, Egg Product, Pork Flavor, Soybean Oil, Fish Oil, Lactic Acid, L-Lysine, Calcium Sulfate, Potassium Chloride, Choline Chloride, DL-Methionine, Potassium Citrate, vitamins (Vitamin E Supplement, Niacin Supplement, Thiamine Mononitrate, Calcium Pantothenate, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Vitamin A Supplement, Riboflavin Supplement, Biotin, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Folic Acid, Vitamin D3 Supplement), Taurine, minerals (Ferrous Sulfate, Zinc Oxide, Copper Sulfate, Manganous Oxide, Calcium Iodate, Sodium Selenite), Iodized Salt, Mixed Tocopherols for freshness, Natural Flavors, Beta-Carotene

First: This is a dry food. That they recommend. For cats with urinary issues. Rule #1 is pretty much more liquids are better for urinary problems. While cats and people are in no way the same animal, it's common knowledge that more water = better for your bladder. The more you pee, the more you flush the system, making it harder for nasty bacteria and infections to set up shop. Dry food has none of these benefits, and if anyone says they help clean teeth, think about how crackers help you clean yours.

Second: Chicken first ingredient!! Except, as I mentioned before, it's weighed before they bake the water out. Therefore, consider this, say, 4 or 5 on the ingredient list. Pet food companies got onto the "meat first ingredient!" bandwagon years ago when the public caught wise to the crap in their animal's food, and the internet demanded more meat...so they did it. Sort of. They figured out a fun loophole where they could say it was the "first" ingredient, duping people into believing that meant it was the main ingredient.

Whole Grain Corn: Remember, cats are obligate carnivores. This means they absolutely must have meat, and as much as possible. Ideally, they'd eat about 95% meat, maybe with a few veggies thrown in. Cats are not like dogs - dogs are far from wolves, genetically, and can eat all kinds of poo poo. Meat is great for them, but they can eat grains and vegetables generally without issue. Cats are different, and much more like their relatives. They need meat. They do not need corn. Corn is sugary, full of carbohydrates, and a "filler" in pet food, which means it bulks out calories with little nutritional value. Whole grain is slightly better, but it preys on our views of food for ourselves. We like "whole grain," "organic" and other terms; this doesn't always mean it's actually superior. This is a source of protein as well, but not an ideal or easily digested one. It can hike the protein in a food with few additional benefits.

Corn Gluten Meal: See above. It's a popular ingredient in livestock feed. Cheap as hell.

Whole Grain Wheat: Also referable to above.

Brewers Rice: Here, I'll copy right from Wikipedia: "Brewers' rice is a processed rice product that is missing many of the nutrients contained in whole ground rice and brown rice thus reducing the quality"

Pork Fat: Honestly, animal fats are a decent addition to pet food, but it would be nice if it weren't a rendered ingredient and instead part of a whole meat.

Chicken Meal: If regulated, good - organ meat is high in vitamins and minerals. If not, bad - think beaks, claws, feathers, etc.

Egg Product: Again, like nunsexmonkrock said: what kind of egg? What part of the egg?

After this, the ingredients become pretty negligible as far as proportion in the food. I will mention Fish Oil, as it's yet another non-specific ingredient. All kinds of fish, from all over the world can be part of this mysterious mix, whose genus and species are notably absent. When a company won't even give you that much, I tend to pack it up. Also, Iodized Salt. Generally, this is for flavoring. Everyone likes salt! But there's generally enough necessary salt present in the ingredients of most (if not all) foods. This inclusion is to make the food palatable.

I hope this helps or is at the very least interesting to someone. With my aforementioned geriatric cat, I was prescribed this food and fed it to him in the morning, with the wet counterpart at night. He refused to eat it, lost more weight, and I got so frustrated I did my own research to the best of my ability. Comparing the levels of minerals, vitamins and etc in Hill's to other available foods, I switched his food in the end to strictly a variety of Weruva canned, and he finally put on weight and regained his former fluffy, massive (part Maine Coon) and goofy former glory. He's healthy and happy again, and unless I have a gun to my head, I won't do prescription again. I'd do raw if he'd eat it...but that's another story.

GoodBee
Apr 8, 2004


If I were a vet, I would find it hard to reccomend a food when I can't back it up with any science/study or guarantee from the food manufacturer.

One problem with non-prescription foods is that their levels of *whatever makes them comparable to prescription foods* aren't guaranteed. If I need a low phosphorus diet for example, the prescription diet guarantees that the phosphorus content is within a certain range. I can also find tests that show a particular flavor of non-prescription food generally has a phosphorus level in the desired range but any particular batch could contain too much phosphorus for my pet's needs and I wouldn't know unless I test every batch. There wouldn't be a recall unless it was outside of acceptable levels for normal pets.

I feel like this falls in the same zone as US vets declawing cats. Most (I think still, I could be wrong) will do it because if they don't the cat get surrendered or euthanized.

MikeyTsi
Jan 11, 2009

If you're looking for a vet diet, check out the Farmina stuff I posted earlier. they seem to do higher quality than Hills, Royal Canin, IAMS, and Purina.

Oh, cool. Blue has vet formulas:

https://bluebuffalo.com/natural-veterinary-diet/

Kia Soul Enthusias
May 9, 2004

zoom-zoom
Toilet Rascal

MikeyTsi posted:

Note that their vet diets, like any vet diet, requires a prescription from a veterinarian.

Also depending on where you're located you'll probably need to order it as only a few chains carry Farmina and I haven't found any that actually stock the vet diets.

Where do you get yours? I'm in Seattle myself.

GoodBee
Apr 8, 2004


I'm really glad other companies are getting into the prescription diet line. A lot of the research has already been done, they just have to guarantee they are meeting the guidelines suggested by research

I also hope I don't need any prescription food, fingers crossed.

MikeyTsi
Jan 11, 2009

Charles posted:

Where do you get yours? I'm in Seattle myself.

I order it from them. It get's fulfilled from some place in PA and they ship it. Estimate about a week for it to be delivered.

If you don't need the vet diets there's one of the local chains that carries the standard food.

If you can't wait maybe try Blue, they're a lot more widely distributed so you might have better luck, and Blue is a top-tier brand.

Kia Soul Enthusias
May 9, 2004

zoom-zoom
Toilet Rascal

MikeyTsi posted:

I order it from them. It get's fulfilled from some place in PA and they ship it. Estimate about a week for it to be delivered.

If you don't need the vet diets there's one of the local chains that carries the standard food.

If you can't wait maybe try Blue, they're a lot more widely distributed so you might have better luck, and Blue is a top-tier brand.

I thought maybe somebody here carried it. What I'm going to do is get a bunch of different foods. It's annoying for sure but my dog gets bored if I don't switch up foods. Right now I just have a few bags of food and have something different each meal.

MikeyTsi
Jan 11, 2009

Charles posted:

I thought maybe somebody here carried it. What I'm going to do is get a bunch of different foods. It's annoying for sure but my dog gets bored if I don't switch up foods. Right now I just have a few bags of food and have something different each meal.

Be careful about introducing new proteins if you're going to do that, if your dog develops an allergy you need to make sure to give them a unique protein they've never had and that's really hard if you feed them a bunch of different stuff.

Kia Soul Enthusias
May 9, 2004

zoom-zoom
Toilet Rascal

MikeyTsi posted:

Be careful about introducing new proteins if you're going to do that, if your dog develops an allergy you need to make sure to give them a unique protein they've never had and that's really hard if you feed them a bunch of different stuff.

He's 18, I don't think he'll develop any allergies now.

padijun
Feb 5, 2004

murderbears forever
my sister just bought 60 pounds of frozen beef trimmings ("50/50") and is trying to make me watch some documentary on netflix about raw diets for pets. what the gently caress. reading the OP, it doesn't sound like a great idea to just "roll your own" like this. I don't think I'm gonna do it but am open to advice. what is the usual fat percentage for a raw diet?

her dog is a 5 year old boston terrier, mine is a 12 year old GSD.

GoodBee
Apr 8, 2004


I hope she's done more research than a Netflix documentary.

I'm not anti raw pet food diet but if the dogs regularly come in contact with small children, elderly or immunocompromised people, do not feed them raw. The risk of bacteria transmission is not worth any potential benefit to the dogs. Cooking her own dog food is fine with regards to that.

padijun
Feb 5, 2004

murderbears forever

GoodBee posted:

I hope she's done more research than a Netflix documentary.

probably not lol

GoodBee
Apr 8, 2004


padijun posted:

probably not lol

Ha!

Yeah. I'd see if you can shut her down if either of you have parents or kids that come in contact with the dogs. There are some reasonable arguments/published rules for why therapy dogs who deal with children, sick people, and the elderly can't be fed raw diets and continue to provide therapy. See if she can be redirected to cooking for pets.

It would take way longer for any negative dietary effects to occur to the dog than risk transmitting bacteria to any vulnerable group of people. Source: I'm pretty sure my shelter pup survived off of literal garbage for quite a while and still exists.

Don't do raw based on a documentary or fad. If you cook for your dog for a couple of months until you get bored, it's probably going to be fine in the long run.

amotea
Mar 23, 2008
Grimey Drawer
Yeah it's fine to feed carnivores meat, just make sure it's varied and all (muscle meat/bones/organs), do some research. It's not an exact science though, but just about any varied meat diet is going to be infinitely better and less expensive than 'high quality' kibble.

Braki
Aug 9, 2006

Happy birthday!
So the FDA recently launched an investigation into grain-free diets causing heart disease in dogs. I wanted to post in here to spread awareness of this, because I know a lot of people here feed grain-free. The link to the FDA statement is here.

The confusing thing is that we don't know what's causing it yet. These diets are formulated with enough taurine, but there is something about them that's either preventing absorption or metabolism of taurine. As a cardiology resident, I have been seeing more and more cases of dogs with taurine-deficient DCM that are being fed a grain-free diet. Just yesterday, we saw a 9-year-old Beauceron that was diagnosed with DCM 8 months ago. Three months later, at his recheck visit, his heart was significantly larger and he was in heart failure. Around this time, there was a lot of discussion among cardiologists discussing a trend they were seeing with grain-free diets and taurine-deficient DCM. This patient was receiving one of these diets, and yesterday, 5 months after changing his diet and receiving taurine supplementation, his heart has dramatically shrunk down and we were able to discontinue some of his heart failure medications.

Guys, this is a Big Deal. Until there's more information about what's causing this, I would recommend switching off grain-free diets. If you have a dog that is predisposed to getting DCM (Dobermans, Irish wolfhounds, Newfoundlands, Golden retrievers, American cocker spaniels, great danes) and you have been feeding them a grain-free diet, I would recommend having them evaluated by a cardiologist. I have been seeing so many cases of this lately, it's crazy, and although it's ultimately good news to tell people that the heart disease can reverse with taurine supplementation, it's also sad because this is not something that should be happening.

GoodBee
Apr 8, 2004


Braki posted:

So the FDA recently launched an investigation into grain-free diets causing heart disease in dogs. I wanted to post in here to spread awareness of this, because I know a lot of people here feed grain-free. The link to the FDA statement is here.

I was reading about this. From the FDA link:

quote:

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is alerting pet owners and veterinary professionals about reports of canine dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) in dogs eating certain pet foods containing peas, lentils, other legume seeds, or potatoes as main ingredients. 

Is this what to look out for? It sounds like the particular foods have been identified but they're trying to not name names.

It also sounds like meat based grain free isn't a problem. Do you have any more information?

Braki
Aug 9, 2006

Happy birthday!
The meat-based grain-free diets typically use peas, lentils, legumes, etc. as the substitute for grain. I have definitely seen dogs develop heart disease from vegan diets, but this particular investigation is into meat-based grain-free diets, or diets with exotic ingredients like kangaroo, specifically because these diets should theoretically have enough taurine because they contain meat, but for some reason dogs are still developing a deficiency in taurine.

Lisa Freeman is a veterinary nutritionist who works at the Tufts vet school and has written a pretty excellent and detailed article here that goes more in depth about it.

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GoodBee
Apr 8, 2004


Braki posted:

Lisa Freeman is a veterinary nutritionist who works at the Tufts vet school and has written a pretty excellent and detailed article here that goes more in depth about it.

Thanks! That's a good article. It seems like there are potentially a couple of different things going on here.

I've got a couple of older cats who've been eating grain free for a long time now. They get senior bloodwork done and are doing well. It doesn't sound like grain free for cats is a problem.

I started feeding my dogs grain free when I got them because it worked well for my cats. But cats =! dogs so maybe I should ask my vet. I've been feeding my cats more wet food lately and I've been considering feeding my dogs more wet food too.

My dogs are shelter dogs so who know what breeds or genetics they might have. They definitely aren't giants and I don't suspect they are any of the other breeds identified as possibly at increased risk, so I think for now I will be on the lookout for symptoms mentioned in the article and ask at my next vet visit. In the meantime, I'm probably going to see about adding some more wet food into their diets.

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