“My dog, Vega, has had a lot of challenges since my husband
and I have taken her in off the street.
From social anxiety to diarrhea problems in her early years, patience
and care has been the key to getting her to where she is today. When she was young, her dry food diet changed
several times until we found one with the highest fiber content to help stop
her loose stools. Dr. Ku has been there
every step of the way with her sensitive stomach problems. Vega is now almost 10 years old. Earlier this year, my husband started
noticing that she is farting more often.
When she does, if she is awake, she looks at her hind end in surprise
and then runs out of the room. At first,
we thought she just didn’t want to smell her own stench. However, it’s now at the point where if she
releases gas while she’s asleep, she wakes up startled and runs away in
fright! Not only is her gas causing her
to leave the room, but us too!!
Eventually, we were tired of gagging on her almost silent and deadly gas,
and sad that Vega was scared of herself.
I approached Dr. Ku shortly afterwards and asked her, ‘Like people, when
we get older, do dogs fart more often too?’
Dr. Ku laughed, and then told me…”
~Danielle, Vet Assistant
Dogs, and people, and most animals, naturally have gas
related to digestive gas producing bacteria in their intestinal tract. Sometimes, these gas producing bacteria
overgrow or dominate more than they should due to the foods we eat. The type of fiber found in different diets,
or certain ingredients, may lead to an excessive amount of these types of
bacteria in the gut, and the end result can be malodorous, or excessive (or
both!) gas production.
For Vega, we decided to first try her on a probiotic. This is an abundance of “good” bacteria that
we “feed the gut” in the form of a chewable dog treat called Prostora, or a
capsule called Proviable. There is also
a powder known as Fortiflora. These
three products are similar, but again, the delivery system (chewable, capsule,
or powder) can also affect how well some animals retain the good bacteria. The idea is to flood the gut with enough
“good” bacteria to out compete the “bad” (gas producing) bacteria. She tried them all, and while they helped
some, none were enough alone to control her gas.
Next we decided to experiment with her diet. For years, Vega had been on an over the
counter good quality lamb and rice diet.
Sometimes lamb based diets can be a little fattier, or the pet can have
difficulty with that type of fat digestion.
We first tried an easy to digest prescription diet well tolerated by
most dogs, but this did not seem to help either. With this diet the main source of fiber was
beet pulp, and thinking that this might be hard for her to digest, we then tried
another brand of enteric diet (easy to digest).
After fully weaning to this diet for the past three weeks, Vega has not
had any more noticeable, malodorous or frightening farts! And now she and Danielle sleep well through
the night 😉.
For better or worse, we are all made differently, and even
at different stages of our lives, our ability to digest foods, our “gut flora,”
and our need for fiber, can change. This
means things can change, but we can also learn to listen to the changes
(literally!), and make the necessary adjustments. Although it may be a bit tedious to do the
trial and error approach, sometimes there is no other way to discover what
works best for each individual. And
luckily we have lots of choices. Bon
appetit! -Dr. Gloria Ku
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| Thank You, Dr. Ku! |
