Raw Diet and thyroid: a pain in the neck?

We've had some ups and downs in Luna's Adventures in Hypothyroid... Some potentially related to her raw diet... A bit of a long lead up, but I'll get to the connection, I promise.

AS I think I've discussed here, Luna had developed some crazy behavior that we believed was linked to her low thyroid. It showed up mostly as fear of all sorts of things she was previously unafraid of-- the kitchen, the car, her harness, loud noises, the agility tunnels... You name it.

Once we got her on Soloxine (.4mg BID), those issues sort of melted away. Kitchen was no longer an issue, she harnessed up and rode in the car with no problems, and she became an agility superstar...

Protocol is generally to monitor the thyroid levels periodically, since they change as the dog gets older. We didn't do the full panel this time-- just an in-house SNAP test. And she tested just above normal. Not a LOT above normal, but enough that her vet wanted to see how she would do on the next dosage down (.3mg).

Within a couple of days, she seemed a little more skittish. Over the next few weeks, she didn't seem quite right, but I thought I was probably imagining it.

In the heat of this August, we bought a couple of sprinklers for the pups to play in out in the yard. Andre took to it right away. He loved it.

Luna stayed in the background barking. Finally, she decided to attack the sprinkler. It was pretty funny to watch. But her focus on the contraption was way too much. WAY too much. Too intense. Too obsessive. TOO. MUCH.

To make a long story less long, the intensity over the sprinkler was the last straw in a list of Very Exciting Things in Luna's day and it seems that she snapped. She and Robin got into quite a fight. Puncture wounds, a broken tooth, and hurt feelings. And keeping the two of them separated while we work on lots of classical conditioning and desensitization and allow everyone's hormones to reset.

And while we allow her thyroid medicine to kick back in. As many of you may know, a low threshold for aggressive behavior is one of the behavioral signs of low thyroid. The vet agreed to put her back on the higher dose, and as long as her behavior is ok and she's not losing weight, we're going to be happy with it, "Tests be damned," as he said.

And she is better. Much less fearful. Calmer. Happier.

So what does this have to do with her raw diet?

Well!

I started trying to figure out why her numbers were higher than they were the last time we tested over the winter.

One thing that might be contributing is the spirulina supplement. That has some iodine in it.
The other thing I came across was this study from the Journal of Small Animal Practice. Basically, this study looks at a number of cases of dogs who exhibited symptoms of HYPERthyroid and were fed a raw diet. Turns out, they received higher quantities of neck material-- beef gullets, etc.-- in their diet, which contained, in some cases, the thyroid itself, and almost unavoidably thyroid hormone and other material.

This winter, we pulled Luna off of chicken and began using turkey as her primary bone source. Necks are the cheapest and boniest cut for us. And they frequently get a mix of gullet and tripe. So she's received a lot of neck material lately.

So what does that mean???

Don't worry. It doesn't mean that we will be stopping the raw diet. And no it doesn't mean we're getting rid of necks altogether. And it also doesn't mean that this necessarily had anything to do with her higher numbers. She's a young dog. Frankly, she probably should run a little high.

But it is an EXCELLENT reminder to diversify the diet. We're adding in more turkey legs. I'm also researching sources for duck frames and rabbit backs. And we may revisit chicken for her. It was kind of a random stab at seeing if she's sensitive to chicken as one of her allergies. And I've increased the amount of plain tripe that I buy and less of the mix with gullet.

It's also a good reminder that adding supplements to a diet willy nilly has the potential to cause some unintended consequences. While iodine is really important, when you're trying to balance the thyroid medically, pharmacologically, adding things like additional iodine can skew all of that and put it higher than it needs to be. Alone, adding iodine wouldn't be enough for her. So she needs the soloxine. So it's possible that me adding the spirulina put her over the top. I am still giving it to her. I think its benefits are good ones. But if we still have trouble after diversifying the diet, I might rethink the spirulina at that time.

An unexpected twist...

Yes, Luna Bird-- we're talking about you...

I'm learning a lot of lessons these days.

With Luna's persistent yeast issues, we started adding Animal Essentials Green Alternative. It has spirulina, nettle, garlic, and some other stuff that helps keep yeast in check. I think it has made her very soft, so I've started incorporating it in with the other dogs' food in place of some of the other supplements they get.

If you recall, Luna is also low thyroid. She takes .4mg of Soloxine twice a day. It has turned her around completely. She is muscly again, and all the inexplicable weird fears she had developed have melted away.

She went in this week to have a routine test of her thyroid levels. We opted to just do the in-house test since things have been going just fine, for the most part, and we'll do a full panel at Michigan State or at Hemopet if there are problems.

So I did what I'm supposed to do. I gave her a pill first thing this morning, fasted her, and took her in 5-6 hours after the dose for the blood draw.

And it was high. Her levels were high. Not just high-normal (which is what we want in a dog her age), but high.

So we've taken her dose down to .3 twice a day. The only thing I can think is that there's enough iodine in the spirulina to aid in thyroid function. We'll see. I really, really, really hope we don't backslide.

The supplement is literally the only difference I can think of. I pulled her off of kelp when we started using the Soloxine, even though Dr. Dodds (a canine thyroid expert) says it's ok if the dog is being fed a homemade diet.

In addition to all of this, I'm supposed to be getting a small bottle of Herbsmith's Clear AllerQi in the mail today to try for Luna's still itchy paws. I do believe I'll be double-checking all the herbs and how much they might contribute to thyroid function before I dive on in...

And last but not least, I think I've found a supplier for duck necks (and perhaps rabbit), so I'm hoping to add those to the mix, and maybe even try those for Luna instead of turkey.

Just need to choose one thing at a time so I'm not changing everything at once...

Supplement updates, etc.

Not much to report on Dre these days (thankfully...). Appetite is as, erm... voracious as ever.

Biggest problem we have right now is that he's discovered the plum trees and wants to eat them all. Thankfully he doesn't crunch the pits (inside is where the toxins are), but unsurprisingly they agitate his system, so he's being closely monitored.

As for River's hip, we have been continuing Adequan and she has been on the Herbsmith for several weeks now. And I do think it's helping her. I'm ready to dive into a big bulk canister of the stuff now. And once she runs out of Glycoflex, we may try Herbsmith's glucosamine supplement.

She is springy and spry and spending much more time upstairs with us.

Luna's yeasty paws seem to be continuing to do well with the spirulina and no chicken; I've faded out the Zyrtec for her and for Robin, so we will see how that goes.

Onward and upward.

What do you do with a hinky hip?

People always ask me how old River is. She's somewhere between 9 and 10. She was an owner surrender in April of 2009, and her age was listed as 4.

She's still excitable and feisty when we go out, and she doesn't have her grey face yet-- just a slight peppering of white hairs on her muzzle that you can see if you look very closely. She's still silly and pretty and giving us all hell. It is her life's work.

But we've noticed some slowing down. Some excess shedding. Some pain. She goes up the stairs quickly, but with a hop, and comes down a little cock-eyed. So we started the Adequan a few months ago, and I think it's helping her. 

We noticed yesterday that she cried much of the way down the stairs, though. I noticed a lot of resistance when I tried to manipulate one of her rear legs. So off to the vet we went. 

We did the first set of xrays that she's had in a couple of years. And this time, there was some arthritis visible in her hips and knees. It clearly hurt her to flex the hip for xray, so we didn't opt to take a second film that would show a little more. 

I had already been considering trying out Herbsmith's Soothe Joint as extra support to add to the glucosamine. It's a Traditional Chinese Medicine herbal blend. I jokingly mentioned to the vet that I know I'm a fruitloop, but I'm thinking of trying it out. She did not laugh. 

In fact, she told me about some success she has been having with her own ailments using a Chinese herb in tea form. And then she asked me how I felt about NSAIDs instead of just prescribing them and moving on. It made me really appreciate the relationship we've developed with our vets-- particularly this vet who seemed the most skeptical of our move to raw to help Robin's crystals. 

So River currently takes Glycoflex III, but I think Dasuquin works a bit better, and so when we run out of the Glycoflex, we'll switch back. She gets salmon oil, so we'll boost that and carry on. I have the Rimadyl on hand for rough days, as needed, but we'll likely look for a gentler solution. And she's really not going to like this one... I really think I need to reduce her food just a bit again. 

But she WILL like this one: we'll need to take more walks to work off this last 5lbs that she needs to lose. 

In the meantime, Andre continues to do well with beef, turkey and pork at home. He and Luna switched to an all-in-one probiotic/enzyme powder.

And Luna's nails are growing back yeast-free. We have put her on Animal Essentials Green Alternative, and so far so good. Her skin and coat look better, too. I think this is taking the place of her kelp nicely.

And a few interesting things going on with Robin, but I'll address those in a separate post. :)

New Ailments and Updates

That's perhaps a bit misleading. These aren't new ailments. More like a new perspective on existing ailments.

But first, the good news. Andre has been successfully moved to a homemade diet of ground turkey necks and legs, beef heart, beef tripe, beef trim, pork heart, and a variety of pork and beef organs. It takes the cost down from $3/lb for premade to more like $1.65/lb. I can live with that. Huzzah!

The only thing I've seen is a few lbs lost, but I think that's due more to the summer burn. We've upped his rations by a couple of ounces.

But this little nugget. This is my itchy girl.

Such a big day. Scratching is exhausting.

Her itchiness is miles better than it was when we found her a few years ago. We've had her on benadryl, then claritin, and now zyrtec. We've removed chicken from her diet, and the itchiness seemed to improve a tiny bit. She stays pretty well grain free (save the odd treat from the people in the drive thru).

About 6 months ago, she was diagnosed with a low thyroid. Twice daily Soloxine has done a lot for her. Her whole attitude and demeanor have improved. Her fur feels better. Her muscle tone has returned after she had become fairly suddenly flabby.

But she still licks her feet. Because of the thyroid, I give very little kelp, which I think was previously helping her allergies. And recently, her left rear paw has had a lot of cracked and split nails. Like all of them. She tore a paw pad on her front right foot. And was stung by something on her front left foot. And we just got back to agility, so the timing COULDN'T BE BETTER.

And she's had some itchy ears lately, as well.

We discussed all this with her vet. He felt like her rear paw definitely had a major overgrowth of yeast, and possibly a bacterial infection, and that this was likely making her nails brittle. Makes perfect sense. We are currently treating the infections.

Now, I had always assumed these were allergies. But something in the back of my mind popped up and I recalled reading that hypothyroid dogs frequently have chronic and/or systemic yeast infections as a symptom.

Maybe... just maybe this is what we've had all along. Not allergies per se, but overgrowth of yeast due to low thyroid. It's improved, not because we removed chicken, but because her hormones are leveling out finally. But it's systemic and I've pared her diet down so much that her body's flora just isn't balancing.

So we are on a major gut flora refresh. She'll complete the antibiotic treatment and antifungal treatment. Meanwhile, I'll continue her on probiotics, increase the amount and frequency of kefir, and add in some other things that are known combatants of yeast or are immune supporters: coconut oil (we started slacking on this one), spirulina (since we do very little kelp), nettle, MSM. I'll be trying out Animal Essentials Green Alternative, which contains several of those herbs. And we are tapering off the zyrtec.

Then maybe I'll begin reintroducing chicken.

Anyway, fingers crossed. Puts a whole new spin on her itchies.

Further reasons for raw

Sorry for the lapse here... I've been out of town and tied up in the preparations for going and the return to civilization upon coming home. Finally getting to the nitty gritty of what we actually do/did is coming up... in the meantime, I appear to have left off with our other reason for the switch to raw:

Luna
When we found Luna she was 4months old, or so. Her skin was in such bad shape that I thought she had mange; rather, she was just allergic to everything. Fleas, pollens, you-name-it. And we could never get a solid stool. She had worms, was skinny, had ear infections, and her flea bites ALWAYS turned into pustules and staph infections, so she was constantly on antibiotics. She has a Shar Pei horse coat, and topical flea treatments didn't work on her. Her nails were brittle. She was a hot mess.

Hard to see how patchy she is, but you can see how red and just "off" she looks.

But because we had no idea how big she would get, and I was new to raw, we decided to put her on kibble until she was done growing vertically. I might do things differently in future now that I know more, but I wanted to err on the side of caution.

With growing puppies, the conventional wisdom has always been to make sure that the calcium content of the food is appropriate so that they don't grow too quickly for their bodies to keep up with their bones. We tried premium foods with grains and could never get a solid stool. Upon removing grains, the change was immediate. Solid stool, weight gain. We were good to go. Her skin certainly improved, especially after adding coconut oil and salmon oils to her foods, but she, too, had a UTI and crystals, and her allergies just never quite settled down. She still got staph infections; Benadryl stopped working for her and we switched to Claritin.

When she was nearly a year old, we made the switch. And we haven't looked back. We have only had to treat for fleas a few times in the last few years; when she does get a flea bite, it's a bump, but it's not the end of the world. No drugs required.

People who normally are plagued by the Shar Pei coat comment on how she is the only Pei or Pei/mix that doesn't make them itch. She still makes me itch on occasion, but it's nothing like it was. She's no longer patchy. She remains trim, but healthy and muscular. She generally has solid stool. Her nails are far less brittle (she broke 3 or 4 over the course of about a year, all of which required vet treatment). She is happy, beautiful, and energetic.

When she went for her check-up earlier this year, I made sure I didn't need to put weight on her or anything. No, he told me she was perfect condition, don't change a thing. He said we know what we're doing, so keep doing it. :)

She still struggles with seasonal allergies, but they aren't nearly as problematic as they were.

River
A word on River. We'd initially hoped the change to raw would help with her anal glands, which were needing to be expressed more frequently than I'd have liked. Raw alone didn't help, but other dietary measures did.

That said, raw has decreased her shedding by quite a lot. And because she is now 8 or 9 years old, I went ahead and asked the vet to run blood work for her. And it looked great. :)