I wish i could feed raw but living in the mountains, our only option for meat would be the grocery store and the prices are insane!! I fed raw before it became popular in the early 90's, i lived close to a slaughter house and i could get fresh scraps of beef, chicken , pork for like 10 cents a lb, or frozen in 1 pound blocks. But then feeding raw took off and the prices went up and i moved to the kootenays so finding reasonably priced good dog food has been a chore. But as my experience of feeding dogs for almost 30 years, all these "new holistic brands" come on the market the more i see of these issues with dogs. I blame the food i was feeding her that caused these problems my female is going through. I was feeding pedigree, yes i know BUT it has been THE ONLY food that i have fed that does not cause my dogs to have GAS!! And not just one or 2 dogs but all my dogs that i had on it. So when i seen a new brand that my local country bumpkin store (live in a town of 600) had started to bring in, i liked what i read on the bag, researched the company, made in Alberta, so i switched the 3 dogs i had at the time to it. It was called riplees ranch holistic, 30lbs for $70 not cheap. 2 dogs did fine on it, my fila on the other hand had loose stool constantly and she got itchy and red bumps bad ears bad toe guck, i kept her on it figuring eventualy she would get used to it, but her stools never firmed up even after 4-6 months of being on it. So i was told he would not be bringing it in anymore as his supplier was moving out of the area and he would have to travel to vancouver to get it. So i went back to pedigree and her poops went back to normal but everything else stayed the same. While reading about the yeast all of the articles i have read all say dogs who are yeasty should NOT have potatos of any kind, try and find a high end food WITHOUT potatos in it. I just bought a bag of FROMMS adult gold and have been feeding half pedigree and half fromms, the fromms has probiotics in it as well. I also didnt see until i got it home but it has potato in it, so we will see what happens. The probiotics i give her are human cause i can not find a place to get dog probiotics which is a powder you sprinkle on the food, also not alot of studys have been done about the human grade getting past the dogs stomach acid into the intestines where they need to be, so i bought the enteric coated, i will post up dates in a few weeks about my findings if any lol.
So i took her to the vet and she said she has a yeast overgrowth and she would not give me anything for it, cause it will just make it worse. So i have researched everything to do with yeast and the only thing that everyone is saying is getting the gut flora back to normal and the only way to do that is by flooding the intestines with good bacteria. Most people think if they give yogurt it will get rid of the yeast, but it doesnt , it doesnt have a high enough concentration of bacteria to touch the yeast, so that is why im adding a probiotic with every meal. I want to put the theory to the test and see if it works, they say it takes about 3-6 months to actually get the yeast under control and they say you should see a difference in 3 weeks if its working. So i will keep you posted as our journey has just started, i started the baths on wed and the food and probiotics yesterday, so by the end of july i should see a difference if its working.