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.

Kefir Success!

Of course, I walk into my local Walmart Neighborhood Market the other day and what do I see? Plain kefir. Same brand I bought at the natural foods co-op. And after my struggles getting it started, the premade bottle looked tempting. However, a small bottle (a quart maybe?) cost almost five dollars, while a half gallon of organic, non-ultra pasteurized milk cost about $3.50. It's worth keeping on...

And then... Finally!!

Two days in a row. Perfect, beautiful, creamy NOT FIZZY kefir.

So what did I change? I used the very minimum amount of milk. Put it in the cabinet at night; and in the morning, I give it a swish and put it in the water heater closet. I take it out in the evening and look. LOOK!

It's gorgeous. And it's pretty firm:

But a little swish loosens it up. It's thick, but not separated.

And it strained very, very easily. 

Whew! Two days in a row. Hopefully this keeps up. I'd imagine that as the grains grow and mature and as the weather warms up, I won't have to move it to the closet. But until then, this is perfect. 

I have totally replaced Andre's store-bought probiotics with this, and we'll see how he does. It's cheap and easy if it continues to be successful.

I'm sold. 

Milk soda

Sodastream missed the boat on this one.

I think I've reached the point with the kefir where it's working and it's safe to eat. And it doesn't taste bad...

But it's really fizzy. It's weird. I know that some people like this and aim for fizzy by using a tight lid. 

I am not aiming for fizzy.

So I guess the long and short here is that the struggle to negotiate proper temperature, time, and quantity continues.

And I wish I'd put the grains in a muslin bag to start with instead of straining them from the kefir. But I digress...

The Kefir Kraze

Keh-fur, kee-fur, kuh-fear... I've yet to figure out exactly how it's pronounced (I'm pretty sure it's the last one...? ). Regardless, it's awesome stuff.

It is also a total mystery to me. And I have been making my own yogurt for years, not counting all the years we made it while I was growing up. I am not new to fermenting milk. This is just a different beast...

I bought some dried milk kefir grains. They were packed in powdered milk. So my first task has been to rehydrate and prepare the grains for use. This is supposed to take a week or so.

I added a cup of cold whole milk, per instructions, covered it with a coffee filter, and set it in the water heater closet. It's cold in our kitchen.

Twenty-four hours later, I strained it (in a non-reactive strainer), put the grains in a fresh jar and added more milk. All was going according to plan.

Well... Next day I pulled out the jar, and it had completely separated into curds and whey. Smelled sour and yeasty (which it's supposed to at this stage), but it's not supposed to be like this. I had to stir it all together and strain it about a hundred times, adding a little fresh milk, before I could separate out the grains.

Thought maybe it was too warm. Put it in the cabinet with the dishes, but it still separated quite a bit. So I thought maybe the grains are growing faster than expected and need more milk. That seems to have helped. The last time I changed it out, it had a layer of yeasty foam and was smelling cleaner. Less separation. Hopefully, we're almost there...

Will continue to update as we go...

The chart explained

This may end up becoming multiple posts, but here goes...

Here it is; I'm told that Victor may be closer to $38/bag at our local farmer's co-op. I'm going to try to go there tomorrow to get some more info on my lunch break. The previous post shows the text that accompanied the chart on Facebook. (ETA-- just went back and saw that it's around $38 WITH TAX. All the chart prices are before tax, so the Victor price should still be about right.)

I'm asked general dog questions all the time, particularly about food. And let's be real. Feeding raw the convenient way isn't even close to being affordable for most people; and making it themselves isn't really in the cards for most others. It's still is daunting and can be time consuming-- if you're not prepping the ingredients and processing meat, you're tracking down deals. It can be costly if you can't buy in bulk or find good deals. And it's just not for the squeamish or the busy. 

Back when we used to feed kibble as their sole diet, I wanted to get the. Very best food we could afford, and we couldn't afford much. But we also had a variety of dietary needs, etc. 

And I am OCD in a very real way. I wanted to know if the better foods really were cheaper than they looked, which we could best afford... And so I did all these calculations scribbled on legal pads. I did this for the cats, too. I loaned my scribbles to people looking for new foods, I lost them. I did them over...

I've got a lot of friends recently with new dogs, so I thought now would be a great time to formalize that chart. 

The long and short is, high quality foods may cost more per bag or per pound, but that's not the whole story. 

I had to make a number of informed assumptions to create the chart

First, I used the feeding guidelines as recommended by the manufacturer. It's important to know that these are frequently inflated. But I wanted to use the conditions that the average owner would be using, and I'm not really interested in making the decision about how many calories a 25 or 50lb dog needs. 

In calculating cups per bag, I used the kcal/kg or grams/cup compared to calories per cup to determine this. So if a 30lb bag of food has 4000 calories per kg, and 400 calories per cup:

30lbs = 13.64kg (@2.2lbs/kg)

13.64kg x 4000 = 54,560 calories per bag

54,560 / 400 calories per cup = 136.4 cups per bag

Make sense?

The problem here is that you're moving from weight to volume to measure mass, so it can't be accurate. A pound of gravel takes up more volume than a pound of sand. And each measuring cup, even if it measures 8floz like every other one cup measure, the variations in shape are going to garner different mass. 

So, I cannot promise that there are exactly that many cups and it will cost exactly that much per day, etc. But I don't think it negates the overarching point: that "expensive food" isn't necessarily expensive.

These foods are representative. Remember that each of these brands has numerous flavors and varieties, and each one is not the same-- not the same caloric content, not the same price per day, not the same ingredients. But, again, they represent options.

Some are owned by big companies. When I say that they have been recalled, know that it's not necessarily that flavor, but rather that variety; I've done my best to find the correct info here-- please let me know if I'm wrong-- however, these are huge companies and some have had huge recalls.

Take the recalls with a grain of salt. Salmonella, as I think I've talked about before, isn't so scary for dogs, more so for people (so wash your hands!). I'm usually more concerned with how the company handles a issue like that. I'll let you research those yourself for now.

You get what you pay for, but not always. My choice of foods here was meant to represent some mid-range grocery brands, what we've traditionally thought of as "good, fancy" food, and an affordable range of more holistic foods (grain free and inclusive), and there's a wide spectrum of cost across the board. 

Victor is one of the cheaper foods; but it's ingredients are solid and certain varieties boast that they are GMO free with American sourced proteins. They are a family-owned company, as is Merrick; Whole Earth Farms (made by Merrick) is USA made with no Chinese-sourced products. But Blue Buffalo is one of the most expensive. It's good food, but of those three, which has the most familiar name? Blue spends a lot on advertising, whereas the others don't.

On the other hand, the 1-3 star foods have a lot of cheap fillers, but they spend even more on advertising than Blue. Who do you think is spending more on quality ingredients?

The returns go beyond your pocketbook. Dogs eating more nutritious food eat less and utilize more-- meaning smaller poops. Ingredients that they can handle better means less body odor, fewer allergies, less itching, fewer staph infections-- the potential for fewer and lower vet bills over time. 

Healthier, happier dogs.

And every dog is an individual. Each  of the 4-5 star foods are good foods, but each is different. Some may tolerate certain brands and varieties better than others, so if one doesn't work for your dog, don't give up. It doesn't mean it's bad food, and it doesn't mean holistic or natural foods are BS. 

This isn't exhaustive, it's not complete-- it will always be in flux. I will add to and adjust as new information comes in or as new foods crop up.

I hope it's a start...