hemangiosarcoma/diet ?

[Liz P]

Yeah but I read if you add water to kibble, there could be some bacteria that is released. Maybe that is for a cheap kibble though?

 

She never gained weight from THK like she did from Acana. THK was in an unprocessed state, where as Acana was processed and cooked to hold a hard texture. Starches are added to hold kibble together on top of what is already in it.

 

All I can can say is this. It was like feeding my dog SUBWAY and she stayed lean to feeding her WENDY'S cheeseburgers and getting fat.

 

How the hell did I even get in this position of choosing the damn kibble is beyond me. I had already wrote if off for years, and then I fell back into it thinking this brand was different.

 

Not all dogs will die like mine did. It's just a warning to anybody that encounters a similar situation. I've talked to tons of people that feed kibble. And they're dogs are fine from what I hear.

 

I fed her the right amounts of food by the way. She just blew up.

 

If there is bacteria in the dry food already, adding water won't make any difference.

 

I've seen plenty of animals who got pancreatitis while eating canned only food. I've also seen plenty who developed cancer than ate canned only, or raw, home cooked, etc. You really don't know enough about diet to be making any of the claims or statements that you are making.

 

Have you ever read any of the anthropology studies on cooked vs raw food? Calories and nutrients are more readily available from cooked food. It is believed that cooking triggered the massive increase in brain size of modern humans.

 

Acana is not the equivalent of Wendy's, but you can gain weight even on healthy food if you eat too much of it.

 

If she gained lots of weight (and the weight was not all tumor) then you were NOT feeding her the correct amount of food. The suggest amount of kibble on the bag is just a starting point. Generally, the bags tell people to feed up to twice as much as your average dog needs. You need to constantly monitor weight and adjust food volume accordingly.

[Tommy Coyote]

Liz: How many calories does an average 40 pound, fairly active dog need? I know it varies from dog to dog but can you give me a general answer.

 

One of my customers has two AKC border collies that probably weigh 35 pounds. The older, spayed female is a little on the heavy side. I don't know what kind of kibble they feed but it is a grocery store kind which means it's probably about 350 calories a cup. She only feeds the older dog 1 cup a day. Can a dog do all right on so few calories a day?

 

My older dogs are pretty active and I give them about 700 calories a day. Is that too much?

[Liz P]

Sled dogs will burn upwards of 20,000 calories a day. Many pet dogs only burn a few hundred a day. Calorie needs depend heavily on age, lifestyle, reproductive status, etc. If the dog is not losing weight, it's eating enough.

 

I think my retired, spayed, elderly 30 lb female burns about 400 to 500 calories a day, based on how much food she eats. My working dogs average two to four times that much on your average day, but will eat up to 3000 calories on a more active day. Just to show how age and sexual status can affect calories; my intact 4 year old bitch eats just as many calories as my neutered 6 year old dog. The bitch weights 30 lbs and the dog weighs 47.

 

Don't get hung up on calories so much as whether or not they are at an ideal weight, are maintaining muscle mass and have plenty of energy (for their age). Some dogs will need supplemental nutrients (vitamins, joint supplements, fish oil pills).

[Gideon's girl]

My 12 lb 11 1/2 year old JRT eats about 400 calories a day. And my busy BCs, 1 1/2 and 2 1/2 yrs and both neutered, both 40 lbs, get about 1200 calories per day. They are more than 3 times her size and way more than 3 times as active, but definitely burn fuel more efficiently.

[jb777]

I only fed 2 cups a day at most 2 1/2. This was in the beginning. I then reduced it to 1 or 1 1/2 at most. All meals split into one morning, and one night. with a tiny bit for snack.

 

It didn't occur to me that she got heavy until March. So it was a gradual weight gain. The odd thing is the kibble was keeping her heavy. I know if I switched back or had time to switch back to The Honest Kitchen (original diet) she would have lost the weight.

 

If I had known about the tumor a year ago, cause I'm sure it was there in a smaller state. I would have researched CANCER dog diets. Cause I recently read some info on the subject and they state the same info. Part of the diet suggests NO CARBS. Maybe she would still have died?

 

I'm just telling my experience. I'm not against people feeding kibble.

 

I also wish I had an even better vet, so I'm unhappy with that part as well. They were OK, but I got a little disappointed in them. Good vets are hard to find.

 

One other dumb thing on my part. I thought 32 lbs was skinny. And I do think 38-40 would have been better. But maybe it was normal for her?

[Maralynn]

Re: weight. I want to easily feel my dog's ribs when I run my hand over their ribcage while applying a slight bit of pressure. I don't want them to feel bony. Since Border Collies vary so much in size and bone structure you can't really know how much a dog of a certain size should weigh. You have to go by their body condition. My male is 17.5" and his ideal weight is 30#. My female is 21" and her ideal weight is 37-38#

[Maralynn]

With hemangiosarcoma the tumors grow fast and are rarely caught early on by any vet. My dog had a thorough checkup in at the end March and the vet felt nothing abnormal (it might have been there but small enough is wasn't noticeable with palpation). At the end of May I felt the tumor (located on her spleen) while petting her. It was quite large then and an ultrasound showed it had already spread to other organs. This happened while she was eating a raw/THK diet.

[jb777]

Wow. Interesting. Well the kibble is guilty of making her obese. So if that squeezed her organs tighter, that's no good.

 

Thank you Maralynn for you info. I appreciate it.

 

Was your dog obese when it died? the one that ate RAW food.

[Maralynn]

My dog was in great shape. Fit, active, at the same weight she'd been her whole life. She had just turned 12 but pretty much acted like in a dog in their prime.

[Maralynn]

And kibble doesn't make a dog fat, consuming too many calories makes a dog fat. Metabolic and activity levels vary so much that you often can't feed according to bag instructions. You have to feed for body condition. . Right now my 30# dog eats about half of what my 37# dog eats. He is pretty much spot on with what the bag recommends, she consistently needs 25% more than what the bag recommends for her size.

[Sue R]

And it's not as simple as ideal weight or dog's size versus calories, as many including Mara have pointed out. Activity level is important, with hard-working and very active lifestyle dogs needing more calories to maintain weight.

 

In addition, dogs have their own personal metabolism - I know two bitches in particular (one a purebred border collie and one an Australian cattle dog/border collie cross) who both are what I'd call "very efficient" with their calories. They just simply require much less in the way of calories to maintain their weight compared to other dogs, on a pound-for-pound basis.

 

Seasonal changes also affect need for calories, particularly when coupled with the dog's own characteristics. In winter and most noticeably when we spend more time outside for chores or exercise, our Dan, who has almost no undercoat, needs a lot more calories than Miss Efficient Megan, who has a much more dense and thickly undercoated pelt (and she's not a "big-coated" dog, just a medium rough-coat), and more than Celt, with his fine coat that has a reasonable amount of undercoat.

 

There are so many contributing factors - the animal, its metabolism, its activity level, time of year and weather-related requirements, along with the particular food you feed. When we switched from one kibble that we'd used for several years, I had to feed a lot more of the better-quality new food to maintain weight and condition for quite some time. Apparently, the dogs took some time to adjust to the new diet because I had to scale back after a while (taking season and other variables into consideration) to avoid overweight.

 

Hands-on is the best way to evaluate your dog, along with the scale.

 

PS - As regards our old Mac's hemangiosarcoma, he was fine although arthritic at his vet visit but some few months later began losing body condition while I noticed his belly rounding. A prompt vet visit revealed a huge hemangiosarcoma on his spleen, that had grown enormously in a very short amount of time. He was put down just two weeks later when he let us know it was time. These things grow very, very fast.

[GentleLake]

Well the kibble is guilty of making her obese.

 

Only if you fed her too much of it.

[jb777]

should have never bought the kibble. 1 1/2 cups was too many calories.

[Liz P]

[GentleLake]

1 1/2 cups was too many calories.

 

Then you are guilty of overfeeding her.

 

I put my hands on my dogs daily, so I know if they're gaining or loosing weight. If they're doing either, I adjust the amount of food accordingly.

 

You should have been doing the same. You can't blame weight gain on the dog food. It's all on whomever doles the dog food out.

 

I totally agree w/ Liz . . .

[rlwzgd]

 

ha! I'll join you!

[Maralynn]

Just one more question before I get off this merry-go-round. Are you aware that most grocery store chicken has arsenic, a known carcinogenic, in it? You can google "arsenic in chicken" to find out more

[Sue R]

should have never bought the kibble. 1 1/2 cups was too many calories.

 

Then you could have simply fed less. Half a fried chicken is too many calories for me but a piece of fried chicken might do just fine...

[G. Festerling]

Here is what I am thinking for what it is worth.

Your dog had issues. Maybe there were some genetics involved. A tendency to not be able to process certain foods. So chicken was a no no. I know plenty of dogs that do not do well on one ingredient or another. I also know plenty of dogs who should get pancrea issues by all the junk they get into. Heck, I own one! So I believe a lot of her issues with the food were most likely genetic.

They also seem to more and more believe that most cancers are genetic lottery. With certain environmental influences.

While I find it admirable that you are doing the research and am looking to do what you consider better...I think you are being just a bit blind to many other information as well.

 

To me, it is a dead set sign that something is wrong...major wrong, when a dog looses weight. Very simple. As many things as we do around here ourselves....weight loss when nothing in food has changed or there are no outside reasons (weather, work, other stresses) that dog is going to the vet.

Only one time have I encountered (horses not dogs) a situation where animals lost weight with the same food and regiment. Turns out the feed company changed formulas.

[Laurae]

She looked fine to me, but I should have been weighing her all the time, looking back. She went from 32 lbs to 52 lbs. in 7 months.

 

Did you really not notice that your dog nearly doubled in size in seven months?

 

No judgment; I am just surprised at that.

[OurBoys]

jb, you give me the impression you think fat dogs are healthy dogs. In post #40 you said

 

At some point she was heavy. She looked fine to me....

Your dog ended up getting pancreatitis and even though there are a number of reasons a dog can get pancreatitis, eating a high fat diet is the #1 cause.

 

 

Well the kibble is guilty of making her obese.

No, kibble did not make your dog fat. You did. And if you don't own up to that, there's a high probability history will repeat itself when you get your next dog.

 

 

I fed her the right amounts of food by the way.

According to whom?

 

 

1 1/2 cups was too many calories.

So who forced you to feed her that much? Why didn't you just cut back on the amount you were giving her? Could it be because

 

She looked fine to me...

 

 

 

Well the kibble is guilty of making her obese. So if that squeezed her organs tighter, that's no good.

Again, it was your fault she was obese, not the kibble. Being overweight is uncomfortable and leads to health problems but if anything was squeezing her organs, it was the tumor.

 

 

The Acana dry seemed to be working. She gained weight. Too much weight. I believe it overworked her organs and fed the tumor with all the added CARBS.

Everything that "feeds" cancer cells also "feeds" normal cells. And if you try "starving" cancer cells you will also "starve" normal cells. Dogs can survive on a no carb diet but can they thrive? Dogs (like humans) need some carbs. You just need t be smart about it.

http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/carbohydrates

 

 

I really don't know for sure if what I fed my dog killed her (Acana Dry). I do know it didn't seem to help the situation.

I disagree. If your dog lived for 11 months after you realized she was losing weigh, it sounds to me like Acana extended her life.

 

 

Maybe she would still have died?

Yes, she would have.

http://www.acvim.org/PetOwners/AnimalEducation/FactSheets/Oncology/Hemangiosarcoma.aspx

 

 

I must learn more about nutrition for next time.

Yes, you do. Hopefully, this will help.

http://www.vetmed.vt.edu/vth/sa/clin/cp_handouts/Nutrition_Adult_Dog.pdf

 

For the sake of you and your next dog, I hope you learn to forgive yourself. I know your dog doesn't hold anything against you.

[Tommy Coyote]

_{One of my customers dogs had a kind of cancer that caused fast growing tumors. She wasn't supposed to live very long, maybe a few weeks. She had lost a lot of weight. They put her on prednazone to stimulate her appetite and then the customer fed her anything she would eat. And she did live for a few months longer than predicted. I think she lived another 6 months. Not very long but long enough to give them some more time together.}

[jb777]

If anybody out there has a dog with Pancreatitis or possible Cancer. Do yourself a favor and stay away from kibble. Buy anything but that. Buy WET, OR REAL FRESH FOOD like The Honest Kitchen or some other non-kibble-dry food.

 

Just google CANCER DIET for dogs. It will help your dog live longer.

 

I've learned the hard way about this.

[juliepoudrier]

Sigh. I'd go get the head banging emoticon myself, but I'm too lazy.

 

Guess what? My kibble fed dog is a cancer SURVIVOR (and 16 years old to boot). So much for the theory that kibble alone will either kill a dog or cause cancer to kill a dog. Wow, I've got a dog (and had two others as well), who all lived to a ripe old age on kibble. Must be some sort of miracle of genetics or something.

 

Oh, and in all the discussion of wet food, by which I assume we all mean canned food, generally speaking (and I don't have any cans here to check), canned food is rather low in protein and high in moisture (i.e., water), so you run the risk of an imbalanced diet if you rely only on canned food, unless you're careful. And if one wants to go that route, they would be better off feeding raw and making sure the animal was getting high-quality protein.

 

But so far we've discovered that one dog lost a seriously scary amount of weight on what was purported to be the ideal diet (without any concern from the owner that such severe weight loss might indicate ill health), gained too much weight when switched to kibble (which as others have noted is entirely the owner's fault for overfeeding and not noticing), a dog with a history of pancreatitis being OVERfed, and this same dog died of cancer. And now the death is entirely the fault of being fed kibble. If one doesn't notice the dog losing weight or gaining weight, what else wasn't noticed? The ILlogic just boggles the mind. But I suppose it's important for some people to try to find something to blame rather than just accept the fact that some animals get cancer and then die from it. Others do not. Some tactics can prolong the lives of some cancer patients and some do not. Some cancers can be caught early and are treatable; others are not.

 

Next we'll be hearing about the lawsuit against Acana for killing this dog. Or better yet, sue the providers of the really good diet, since if the dog hadn't lost weight on that in the first place, then the switch to kibble never would have happened and so this story most certainly would not have ended with the death of a dog. Yeah, that's the ticket.

 

J.

[Smalahundur]

I've learned the hard way about this.

I am sorry to say you didn´t learn a thing.

Reread this whole weird topic, you have been given good advice from several knowledgeable people, who back their opinions with sound scientific data (something I really like about this forum, a lot of people here are big on that).

Your reaction? Repeating over and over the same (pardon my language) idiotic conclusions about the tragic demise of your dog.

When you do not drop that attitude ("I am right no matter what") you will never learn anything either.

Will stop ranting now, and leave this topic to never return (I promise).