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Background: 2 Boston Terriers and one Yorkie mix in the house. We've thought that one of the Bostons has had food/seasonal allergies for the longest time. We saw a pet allergist, spent $1000 and basically discovered nothing. Never got to the point of getting allergy shots. At one point, we were very sure he was allergic to chicken, so we tried several foods, and ended up settling on Nature's Recipe Pumpkin and Salmon. All the dogs have been on that for over a year now, and have been doing well. The problem Boston (Riot) still has seasonal allergies, but a weekly bath with some allergy shampoo seems to help that, along with a daily antihistamine pill. Also, as a bonus, we make our own food for them, which consists of taking some beef, and chucking it in the food processor with some green beans and kale. We freeze that into ice cube trays and each dog gets one cube in addition to their kibble. Currently, he seems to be getting tired of the food. He's just not that into eating it anymore. So we've been looking at alternatives. At first I thought maybe had was sick or something, but gums and temperature are fine, he's not tired, and everything else is normal. We went into Petsmart, and were pretty freaked out to see that nearly all the high end foods (Blue Buffalo, Timberwolf, Solid Gold) had chicken fat in them except for maybe one or two. There were some limited ingredient diets that didn't have this, but by and large Chicken Fat was a common occurence...I have no idea why I capitalized that. Anyways, we settled on Blue Buffalo Longevity (which is mainly fish, but has chicken fat in it), and tried it out. Everyone has been on it for the past week and no problems yet. Of course I know that it can take weeks for problems to rear their head, but so far, so good. And yes, we are slowly moving them over to this food for the moment, we didn't just switch up 100% right away. So today I took a trip to this holistic pet store that overcharges for everything, but the workers at least seem to know their stuff. I asked about the chicken fat and the lady said that fat is just a lipid and is normally not the cause for allergies. That it's the actual meat/protein in there that causes allergy problems. I'm trying to check here and see if you guys think that's true also? Finally, it's a lot of work to prepare food each week for them. We've used Primal, Bravo, etc. before, but found it to be expensive as anything. I estimated our food costs to usually be about $50/month for the dry food and another $50 for the beef that we prepare. So about $100/month all told. Anyone know the current costs of moving to frozen or freeze dried? It's two 20 pound Bostons and a 10 pound Yorkie Poo.
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Sep 15, 2013 17:50
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Crooked Booty posted:Why are you spending $50 a month on a treat that is "a lot of work to prepare"? Beef and greens are not nutritionally complete and should not make up more than 10% of a dog's diet. We take the prepped food and add it to the kibble. We did that because our dogs were pretty finicky and didn't like straight kibble. Any recommendations so we wouldn't have to do that would be appreciated too!
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Sep 15, 2013 18:31
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HelloSailorSign posted:Don't give them the high value food (prepped by you) and just give them the kibble. Most dogs that are "too finicky" are usually overweight, or wouldn't be hurt by a small amount of weightloss anyway, so holding out on them until they stop being princesses isn't a bad thing. This seems like pretty good advice and we've been following it. Truth is, out dogs basically are our kids so we tend to spoil them quite a bit. The one boston with the chix allergies is still taking his time to eat, but we set a timer for ten minutes once we put the bowl down and once that times up, we pick all the food up. Haven't had a real issue yet. He doesn't eat the second we put down the bowls like the other dogs but a few minutes in he will start eating. Yesterday he walked away from the bowl with a few minutes left and food still in the bowl, so we had to pick the bowl up last night. Questions: We give him an antihistamine each meal for his allergies. He won't take it by itself and we used to wrap it in the prepared meat and he'd eat it that way. He's an absolute problem if you try and force it in his mouth, then keep his mouth closed and make him swallow. Any ideas? We've tried the greenies pill pockets before and it's like he smells the pill and just wont eat it. Second question is after dinner we brush their teeth and give them a dental chew. If he doesn't finish his food, should he still get a treat? I would say yes because the treat is a reward for his teeth being brushed, but I'm willing to listen.
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Sep 18, 2013 14:00
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wtftastic posted:Have you tried skim milk based cheese to wrap the pills? No, something like Kraft singles?
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Sep 18, 2013 15:30
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