Malnurished Dog

Ivy

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#1
Not sure yet if she's malnourished or emaciated.

What are the best steps to take when caring for a malnourished/emaciated dog? What should I look out for?

I read that feeding a bland diet would be best in the beginning then read somewhere else to feed puppy food (higher fat)

So much contradicting information. Has anyone ever dealt with this? Pointers & advice?
 

GlassOnion

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#2
Bland diet is the way to go. If they've been starved for a long time, their system probably can't handle the 'richer' foods.
 

thehoundgirl

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#3
You can also try making Satin balls. Just make sure you feed the dog small meals at first so they don't bloat. :)
 

Ivy

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#5
Bland diet is the way to go. If they've been starved for a long time, their system probably can't handle the 'richer' foods.
What would be considered a 'richer' food? Something like Orijen you mean?
How about feeding raw? I know that when a dog is on the raw diet, growth is slow but steady. Starting with chicken, pretty bland. No huge growth spurts as compared to a kibble diet.
Or what kibble is recommended? Grain free i'm going to assume, but what percentage of protein, phosphorous/calcium is best in order to avoid too much of a shock.
 

AdrianneIsabel

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#6

Untitled by AdrianneIsabel, on Flickr

This girl started out looking like this

Meeting Tucker by AdrianneIsabel, on Flickr

I used raw meat and Nutrical. These two photos are about 1-2 weeks apart. Honestly don't stress too much, it's not hard to fatten up a dog, even a malnourished one. Just start slowly, be ready for a few pukes, make sure the dog is healthy and has been dewormed and keep around a lot of water.

Good luck!!
 

GlassOnion

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#7
What would be considered a 'richer' food? Something like Orijen you mean?
How about feeding raw? I know that when a dog is on the raw diet, growth is slow but steady. Starting with chicken, pretty bland. No huge growth spurts as compared to a kibble diet.
Or what kibble is recommended? Grain free i'm going to assume, but what percentage of protein, phosphorous/calcium is best in order to avoid too much of a shock.
i/d is about as bland as you can get. Its guaranteed analysis is here.

Doesn't really matter if it's grain free or not. It's a bit harder to digest, as far as an emaciated dog goes, so you might want it without, but it's not going to cause any big problems if you can't find one without.
 

Dekka

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#8
i/d is about as bland as you can get. Its guaranteed analysis is here.

Doesn't really matter if it's grain free or not. It's a bit harder to digest, as far as an emaciated dog goes, so you might want it without, but it's not going to cause any big problems if you can't find one without.
it might be bland, but I am not sure how its easier to digest
Whole Grain Corn, Brewers Rice, Dried Egg Product, Chicken By-Product Meal, Corn Gluten Meal, Pork Fat (preserved with mixed tocopherols and citric acid), Powdered Cellulose
Who grain corn is not known for its ease of digestion. Rice ok.. dried egg product (no idea what that is) Chicken by products.. that has so much variety (ie could contain non denatured drugs and other things in your typical 4D meat.. not what I would say is easy on the digestion)

It might be easier to digest than other SD foods, but I can't see logically how that food would be easier to digest than a food made of chicken and rice. (I can see not loading up on fats, fats are hard when starved)
 

GlassOnion

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#9
Chicken by products.. that has so much variety (ie could contain non denatured drugs and other things in your typical 4D meat.. not what I would say is easy on the digestion)
No more than regular meat would contain, and the same chicken muscle has as much chance of being from a '4D'/drug residue animal as byproducts do. Your stomach, even in a previously starved dog, does a good job of denaturing proteins, it's what it does.

Protein sources won't matter too much as primary energy sources in starvation are carbohydrates and fat. In a cat, sure. In a dog, not so much.

Whole grain corn may be more difficult to digest than just corn starch on its own, but I've not seen anything to indicate that it's significantly harder to do so. If you have something that says otherwise, please share.

Most people I've seen claim this do so because it has higher fiber content (and thus produces a larger stool) and that's mistakenly thought as "oh this dog isn't digesting this as well", which is true for the insoluble fibers (hence it going out into the stool), but not the stuff inside the corn itself. It's already been processed, so it's not like you're just giving them whole kernels of the stuff. You can even look it up on that DogFoodProject site I see people cite a lot.
Corn often gets an undeserved bad reputation. While it is not acceptable as a main source of protein in a dog food (as it is used in combination with corn gluten), as a source of carbohydrates it is no better and no worse than other grains in terms of nutritional value and digestibility. The starch part of corn is highly digestible but the whole ground product has a higher fiber content than other grains (around 7%), which results in slightly larger stools - often incorrectly interpreted as lack of digestibility. Unless an individual dog is intolerant or allergic to corn, there is no need to avoid products which include it in reasonable amounts.
But if you don't like a specific ingredient, then find a food that doesn't have that one; there's plenty of different brands and formulations out there.


Also dried egg product is defined as:
Dried, whole, cooked eggs (minus shells) are often added to pet foods to increase the protein biological value. Raw egg whites contain avidin which binds to biotin (B Vitamin) to make it unavailable to the pet.
It's just another protein source.

Additionally, though 'highly digestible' (of which i/d is one) is not a protected/regulated term, it's traditionally been reserved for meals that have protein, carbohydrate, and fat digestibilities of >85%. That percentage will vary in a previously emaciated dog, but so will others.

Some will say I'm plugging i/d: I'm not. I don't care what she feeds her dog as long as it works. But i/d is a good comparison if you're looking for a similar food. And from my experience, it works very well in handling animals with GI problems, including starvation.
 

Romy

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#10
Why is the dog emaciated in the first place?

If a dog is underweight because it was stray and not able to find enough food, I'd choose to handle it differently than a dog who has food allergies, or just recovered from parvo, or has a huge parasite load, etc.

For the lack of food scenario I'd probably just go straight with puppy kibble or raw, depending on what you're comfortable feeding. Satin balls are excellent for weight gain. So are extra carbs like a bowl of buttered pasta or oatmeal at some point during the day.

For anything else I'd approach with caution. If it's a result of digestive upset, then you don't want to feed something that will keep irritating the digestive tract.

When we got fosters in Tucson we put them on boiled rice and chicken for a couple days, just because they were all stressed and having diarrhea from the combo of being in a shelter environment and the eating shelter food. After that it was a decent quality kibble (usually something from the diamond naturals line) with a little extra, like a chopped boiled egg or something. They all went from pretty underweight back up to a healthy weight fairly quickly.
 
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#11
Molly is very thin, almost looking emaciated, and I guess it's just old age (almost 13), as all her tests came back great last time. A friend of my mother's is the same way. When she was younger, she was pretty thin, then she got slightly pudgy in middle age, and now in her 80's, is very thin. Molly eats fine, but no matter how much stuff I sneak her on the side, she puts on zero weight. She's about 5-7 pounds under 10-12% what she looks best at, about 52-55 pounds. King is perfect, 55-56 pounds, and he seems to be holding his weight fine. She actually eats a lot more than he does, but she just can't gain an ounce.
 

Brattina88

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#12
I had a foster, Tara, that I pulled from the pound and was malnourished. The vet suggested feeding like 4 (small) meals a day until she got to a healthy weight/condition. She was skin and bones but had a potbelly, we thought for sure she had worms but she did not ;) we used canned food, and then mixed it with kibble.
After the first week I put her on 'normal' food (fosters here always ate TOTW) and she did fine! It wasn't an overnight thing, but she did get a lot better fairly quick and when she got to a good condition I cut back to the normal 2 meals a day and she kept it.

One thing I wanted to say is with Tara, she was a stray, so we suspected she ate a lot of garbage and scraps. She had a stomach of STEAL I kid you not. But about 2-3 weeks in she went through a terrible 'detox' - her coat blew, her skin coat and eyes were nasty, as were her stools. I took her to the vet twice that week and they ran tests, but she was fine, just detoxing. After that her coat and everthing looked a lot better ;)
 

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