<p>My lab came down with evil smelling diarrhea and throwing up about a month ago. The vet suspected giardia, and treated her for 5 days with medication. It pretty much cleared up (although she was not completely herself, the worst of the symptoms were gone) for about 2 weeks. Then it came back. The vet is treating again with a longer cycle of the same medication.</p>
<p>I went to the pet food store tonight to buy her a new bag of dog food because we were running low. The space for the food was empty, so I asked if they had more. They told me they had trouble getting it, and they had heard that the factory making it had been shut down due to giardia and salmonella contamination of the food! It is an Iams product (I think they make Eukanuba, too).</p>
<p>I looked at the Iams website, and sure enough they had a recall a couple of months ago for this reason. However, our particular brand was not on the recalled list. I sure am suspicious, though. My dog is 8 and has never had diarrhea in her life. She is pretty closely supervised, so never gets to eat garbage. We have never given her table scraps, either. And I have seen enough “people food” recalls lately to know that sometimes recalls get expanded several times as they discover more contaminated products. Anybody else having pets with unexplained tummy troubles?</p>
<p>I don’t buy that brand, but if you have the bags you bought the dog food in, I would keep them for evidence. Maybe if there is a recall involving food you bought, you could try to get your vet bill paid. At the very least you should report it to Iams, since they will be trying to track any issues like this.</p>
<p>I no longer have the bag (dumped the food into a tupperware tub that I wash out and try after each bag of food). But I have my receipt. I was going to call my vet tomorrow, and I suppose I will call Iams, too. If it were to turn out to be the food, I’d like to see them pay my vet bills, too!</p>
<p>Our prescription Eukanuba/Iams dog food was recalled, but the food I had left was not part of the recall. I actually started a thread several weeks back, looking for others who might be frustrated with trying to find substitute prescription foods that work. We tried a couple and they were too rich for her. So I’ve been making her food for about two months now. The vet provided me with a recipe that is appropriate for dogs with renal issues. Imagine this… 5 lbs. ground beef, 40 cups of white rice, 40 cups of white bread crumbs, 20 hard boiled eggs and 20 teaspoons of calcium carbonate (Tums). It took a large plastic storage container to mix it all in. Then I put it in individual freezer bags (3/4 lb. each bag) for each day.</p>
<p>So when I first introduced this food, she had very soft (not necessarily loose or watery) stools. The vet put her on Flagyl, and had me add 1 T. canned pumpkin to her meals, once in the morning and once in the evening. Evidently pumpkin is a binder. Her stools instantly firmed up so she no longer has loose ones.</p>
<p>Is the vet monitoring her for dehydration? When our dog had vestibular syndrome at the beginning of the summer (throwing up and diarrhea came along with it) we had to give her a saline solution under her skin every day for five days to make sure she stayed hydrated.</p>
<p>Edit: by the way, our dog is 15 1/2 years old.</p>
<p>Yes, Flagyl is what the vet is giving her. And she had us switch to rice & hamburger for a few days while it cleared up each time, then gradually mix the dry dog food back in. The first time she was sick the vet gave her saline under the skin (made her look like a football player, they did it in the back of the neck). Not the second time, as I knew right away that it was the same problem and we had her back on meds the first day. The smell is quite distinctive and awful… even after cleaning up from her mud room area it was pervasive in the house, and we ended up going out to dinner to get away from it. A good kitchen fan is worth a lot on day like that, it was okay by the time we got back.</p>
<p>She is usually pretty healthy, and quite a bit younger than your dog. Except for a tumor removed from her leg about 6 months ago, she has always been very healthy. As far as I can tell this has not had any lasting effect, fortunately. So hopefully we can skip the bulk cooking/Tums mixing experience for now :)</p>
<p>I have a standard poodle with irritable bowel disease (possibly caused by an episode of giardia, which she got at an off-leash area about five years ago). In any case, when it flares up, I treat it with white rice (cooked to complete mushiness), cooked carrots (ditto), and massive amounts of a human probiotic that comes in a vegan formula (so no meat proteins). Three or four days of that diet, then I gradually reintroduce her regular food. She normally takes probiotics every day, but I triple/quadruple the dose when her IBD flares up.</p>
<p>dmd77 - that reminds me, when our dog was on the Flagyl, she was also prescribed a probiotic for the same number of days.</p>
<p>Have to say, I’ve heard of many, many medications due to my job, but I didn’t ever really pay attention to Flagyl until it was prescribed for my dog a couple of weeks ago. Was in a meeting at work the next day and someone mentioned Flagyl, so my ears perked up. I asked one of our nurses about it and she told me that it can be used, crushed up and applied to wounds (like bed sores that become infected, etc.) I thought to myself, wow, that’s a drug that has many uses!</p>
<p>I was put on flagyl one time a couple years ago…omg, it was the worst experience! I wondered, when the Dr. said something like “I’d like you to stay on it for 5 days, if you can tolerate it for that long…”. I’ve never tasted anything so BITTER (just having the pill in my mouth for a sec before swallowing)…and, it made me have this lingering metallic taste in my mouth…ugh. I think I lasted 3 days.</p>
<p>Sorry, had to get that off my chest…back to topic now…</p>
<p>Iams and Euk are both owned by Proctor and Gamble. I don’t sell either food, but I am hearing in the industry that there are some production issues.</p>
<p>I make large quantities of the chicken-vegetable stew & freeze 1-week portions in smaller bags/containers. It’s a bit of work, but the results have been worthwhile. When feeding her, I mix the chicken stew with dried kibble from Trader Joe’s (which I suspect may be produced by Iams). Sometimes I add raw shredded carrots, leftover green beans, baked yams or rice. She loves the veggies, which have made her coat soft & shiny. The modified Whole Pet diet has helped with digestion & other medical issues of an older dog.</p>
<p>Thanks for the good wishes. She actually seems to feel fine right now. She is in the 7th day of an 8 day cycle of Flagyl.</p>
<p>I don’t think it is just the solid food causing the issue, as she was pretty much back to normal for at least a week after the last treatment.</p>
<p>I talked to the vet today, and she agreed that it could very well be the food. She suggested that we switch to Purina One for older dogs going forward (first she suggested Science Diet, but I’m not up for $54 a bag unless really necessary). And intpup is really a very sturdy dog except for this one incident (at least normally has a sturdy tummy). The vet said she thought since I switched her food starting today (bought something different last night), and she is still no the meds for a couple more days that we would probably be okay going forward. She said she would keep this in mind if she sees any more dogs with diarrhea in the near term.</p>
<p>cnp55, I feel like the manager of the pet store did NOT want to tell me why they had production issues. I wasn’t really suspicious at the time, I figured he just didn’t know. But the young women working up front told me all about the rumors they had heard and about the other recalls from the same facility (and I didn’t tell them my dog was sick, just that I needed food for my dog and asked if they could help me pick something because they were out of our brand). Maybe he thought it would hurt his business if people know about this, because in retrospect I am sure he knew the same things the women did. Have you heard any more than just “production issues”?</p>
<p>My dog just loves cooked rice. I gave her homemade lamg and rice when I rescued her she was near death. She likes rice , carrots, sweet potato and meat. I make dirty rice for her. I take bones, like soup bones cook then in water, add rice, turns “dirty” she loves all that uckky stuff from the bones. I think its called marrow.
Any way the rice is great when they have a bad stomach and its good treat when they are well.</p>
<p>Wonder if the dog would like sushi dog food? Gourmet line ?? LOL???</p>
<p>I definitely know they are having unresolved production issues. This was the chain of events when I first heard about the recall: Got a call from the vet’s office letting me know that the food that I had ordered wouldn’t be arriving because of the recall and they didn’t know when the plant would be back in production. I still had about half of a 12 lb. bag left (I order two bags at a time) but it was not included in the recall. So as I began to run low on the food I had left, I began to slowly introduce a new Hills prescription food that was also a formula for renal dogs. However, once the switch was complete, she began to throw up about every other day and the vet said she thought the food was probably too rich for her. She wanted to try a different prescription food, but they would have to order it and it would take a week or so to get in. In the meantime, this is when they gave me the recipe for home-made food. They were also calling Iams every week for updates on production; it was their understanding that Iams was completely closing down the current production facility and they were having to build a new place and once the new place was up and running, production would begin again. The initial projections were a few weeks. After I made my dog’s food for a couple of weeks (in smaller batches, which wasn’t very efficient, but I kept thinking the new food would come in) I began to get concerned about the amount of time I was spending and sent Iams an email myself, asking if they had any idea of when the food might be available. At this point, someone at Iams was telling our vet’s office (on a regular basis), “Oh, it’s on backorder, but probably next week.” But in the response to my email, I was told they had no idea when it would be back in production, meaning not only was it not on backorder, but it wasn’t even in production yet. That’s when I accepted I was going to be making food… I didn’t want to keep running experiments with new foods when she was obviously handling the homemade food well (minus the soft stools). Once we added the pumpkin into the food, it also made a huge difference. So I’ve stopped asking about the future of our formerly prescribed early renal diet.</p>
<p>We also used to give our dog raw carrots, but she wouldn’t chew them up very well, contributing toward a lot of gas. I hadn’t thought about trying cooked. I know she misses her carrots. For a long time, it was one of the only treats she’d get.</p>
<p>So yes, Iams is definitely having production issues and I can’t believe they haven’t been able to correct it in almost three months!</p>
<p>None of the Purina products have great ingredients. Iams and Science Diet aren’t any better. They rely on corn, wheat and things like “animal digest.” The better products are more expensive, but the quality is so much better, you can usually feed less and you may avoid lots of vet bills. Vets know little about food quality and many tend to recommend brands are that are the lowest end of the quality scale. Many dogs don’t tolerate corn well as it is hard to digest. It is really filler only and adds nothing to nutrition. Wheat and corn can be the source of stomach upset and hot spots. My lab practically chewed himself up until I found that the grain in the food was the problem. </p>
<p>This is a good site to research ingredients. </p>
<p>cartera - Is the only answer then to make your own food? Or are their places out there that you can purchase a higher quality food from? Such as gourmet doggie food places.</p>
<p>Many places sell good lines such as Innova and California Naturals. I use California Naturals canned, and it is the only thing my dog can keep down. </p>
<p>I live in an urban area so have no problem finding pet stores that carry the premium brands. They are not the really high end boutique stores but a step up from Pet Smart, etc. </p>
<p>Natura makes both Innova and California Naturals and they have a store locator on the website. </p>
<p>I found the dog food analysis site about a year ago and immediately stopped buying Science diet. I can’t remember the other site I visited, but if you do a little online research you’ll find that many of the major & most popular dog food brands have mostly filler and even known carcinogens. I spend a little more on pet food now, but I figure I’ll save on vet bills in the long run and have my animals for a bit longer, as well.</p>
<p>I now buy Wellness, Fromm’s, Taste of the Wild, and when I can afford it Orijens.</p>
<p>We also buy Wellness dry dog food. It’s expensive, but it’s much better than the stuff you buy in the grocery store (Iams, Purina, etc.). We buy it at Agway or the local pet store. I think Petco carries it, but we don’t have one around here. Our almost 10 year old lab/golden mix eats the Senior Wellness mix.</p>