My dog, an English Bulldog, suffers from excessive hair loss. I've got her on the Hills Scientific Plan Sensitive Skin dogfood which does not seem to help. What alternative dogfood can I look at?
Maybe you could look into a natural diet? ( real meat fruit vegetables, grain/rice, etc) It's more work 'cause you have to measure and cook and stuff but it may help with his skin and hair loss. Have you asked a vet what you should feed him?
I would work with your vet. The problem may not even be diet related. Has the vet done a complete work up with blood tests and all that? Push the vet to find the real cause. How much is excessive? All short haired dogs shed.
It is very dangerous to fool around with preparing you own natural diet. There is no way of being sure you are giving the dog the complete and balanced diet it needs. There isn't a shred of proof backing such diets.
tollie, bulldogs and related breeds, have a tendency toward allergies. Hair loss is one of the frustrating side effects. I agree fully with labman. You should be working with your vet on this. He/she may be able to find what the allergy is through a bloodworkup. But, please don't be too disappointed if the vet isn't able to determine the exact cause. I also agree that switching diets and turning your dog into a virtual guinea pig by trying different things is a very bad idea. Bull dogs have enough of a problem with gastric distress. This will only add to it.
Question for you: Is the hair loss a year round problem, or does it occur more in the cold weather seasons? If it is during the cold weather, your dog may be suffering from alopecia. This occurs due to less sunlight during the winter months. Here is a link to a discussion about it that we had the other day. http://www.askmehelpdesk.com/dogs/do...in-150895.html
If this doesn't help with the problem, it is best to stick with the food you have been feeding and work directly with your vet to see if he/she can come up with a solution. If you get a chance, let us know what the outcome is. I am very interested in what the vet has to say.
Hi RubyPitbull
Thanks for the interest!
My vet actually supplies me with the Science Plan food. I have in the meantime contacted the breeder from whom I got my dog. It seems that the problem may be hereditary in the particular line. His dogs have a similar issue which according to him is OK. My expectation was to have a dog having no hair loss whatsoever... a bit of a misconception I realise now. Thanks everyone (labman and charlot234s) for the input, it is much appreciated.
In defence of charlot, she may have a valid point regarding so called 'natural food', albeit a contentious subject. A friend pointed me to book entitled, 'Longer Life for the Dog You Love', volumes 1 & 2, authored by Michele Welton, published in the USA, 2004/5. Lastmentioned has been a 'dog person' for some 30 years now, and have authored a number of pet care books. She is also a dog instructor / trainer and canine behavioural consultant. In her book mentioned here she propagates natural food, or, as she calls it, REAL FOOD, viz. fresh chicken, turkey, beef, and fresh raw vegetables, fruit, brown rice, oatmeal, yogurt, eggs, and cottage cheese. Having just read the sections pertaining to natural raw food, and references by a number of vets affirming the benefit thereof, I would like to research the matter further.
it's true that you can harm your dog by taking him off dog food and trying to feed natural foods if you don't know what you're doing or don't do it properly or whatnot, but yeah, just a suggestion you may want to look into, but always discuss things major like changing the diet of your pet with your veterinarian first.
Yeah, there is good money to be made writing books filled with junk science about natural diets. If you don't think people are making money on ''natural'' diets, how do you think they pay for all the banner ads here? Those peddling that junk are no better than the people running puppy mills. One of the basic premises is that dogs don't do well on commercial dog chows. That doesn't take in to account all the dogs thriving on such diets.
Suppose you knew a breeder that bred hundreds of dogs a year, mostly Labs, Shepherds, and Goldens. They provided all the medical care for most of them the first year. At the end of it, they did a complete physical including hip X-rays on all of them. They then spent $35,000 training them before giving them away. They have a large data base of breeding records. Dogs with any physical or temperamental problems are unfit for the program and are a waste. Their well equipped clinic and vet staff are available for serious problems as long as the dog is working. When the dog is no longer able to work, it is replaced at again the $35,000 plus a large emotional upheaval for the person depending on the dog. They have experimented with different diets and exchanged data with other such breeders. Don't you think that what ever they are feeding is healthy and safe? What kinds of controlled studies do are there backing other choices of diet? How objective are the sources of your information? Is your dog's health, their top priority?
I have been raising puppies since 1991 for a large dog guide school that does exactly that. What do they feed? They instruct us to feed Pro Plan chicken and rice puppy chow until 4 months and then switch to adult Pro Plan chicken and rice. I know enough of the people with the trained dogs to know they continue the Pro Plan. The group I meet with monthly for training includes people that have raised puppies for 6 different service dog schools. Some of them are feeding other premium commercial chows including Iams and Eukanuba. Any dog owner wanting a healthy, long lived dog can make this regimen work, leaving more time to spend on the dog. It is also relatively economical.
The BARF and other raw and natural diets are built on many fallacies, starting with the idea the chicken from the supermarket is similar to natural prey. Not so. At the processing plant, all the nutritious insides including the organ meats are removed. They are sold to the commercial dog food producers. Have you ever seen a predator eat a kill? What do they eat first? Right, all those nasty byproducts that go into the commercial dog food.
The AVMA condemns the BARF diet. And they are not concerned about contaminating you and your families food handling all that raw meat in your house. The FDA and the CDC are. If you do go with it, practice good sanitation.
If you can't produce a controlled study showing dogs doing better on an alternative diet than commercial chows, why should anybody listen to you? Please don't waste my time with a link to a site hyperventilating about ingredients.
Any breeder knowingly breeding dogs with known genetic defects is a low piece of scum with a cash register for a heart. Make sure everybody you know hears about your dog's problems.
There are any number of sites put up on the net by kooks and those selling alternative diets pushing such diets. One of the few sites giving the other side too is Articles 2 As far as I know, they are selling dogs, not dog chow.
Most of the people I have seen advocating alternative diets, don't seem to know much else about dogs either.
I am not advocating alternative diets, or purchasing anything commercialized and marketed as an alternative diet I am just giving suggestions, and in no way telling someone what to do without consulting a veterinarian first, and it's true I don't know everything about dogs, but for hundreds of years people fed their dogs natural foods, kibble wasn't around, so it CAN be okay if a person KNOWS what they are doing, so PLEASE do not act like I am stupid or be rude to me, I was merely making a suggestion and I don't need to be attacked for talking about something with someone, and I was not rude to you or this person in any way, nor was I pushing anything on them.
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