TMI question about farting dogs.

No I think its quite normal.Oscar has also recently become a farter and boy do thay smell ,Im sure it will be down to change of diet not anything more sinister.

Rocket farts a lot more since he's been exclusively on dried food.

He's on James Wellbeloved. He might stink of fart, but he doesn't reek of "dog" which is lovely (a feature of his breed actually). His sister, who is fed on a combination of wet and dry food, stinks of "dog"

The smell of the Wonderdog's farts is sometimes so bad when we come in from being out for a while that we look for the turd. ? Unless he has learned to poo under the rug, or hide turds under the sofa, then it really is just an unbelievable concentration of dogfart. ?

This REALLY made me laugh. He's such a LITTLE dog too! Mind you, my Dad has a little dog with an amazing ability to cause nuclear fallout, so maybe the smaller the dog, the bigger the pong? Thanks heavens Penny is not too small - if old dog + dry food is bad enough, old dog + dried food + little dog must be hideous.

Anyway, thanks both for the reassurance.?

My two pugs let rip some right corkers sometimes (so bad that we're looking for some form of turd in the room) and they're on the complete dried food. I think this is the norm with dried food.

It's pretty normal, but I would be looking to change the dog's diet to something they don't have a lot of wind on. I just don't think they can be comfortable having trapped wind a lot.

Which food is it?

L
xx

Um.. good question. A Pedigree Chum one I think - one with soft bits in as well as just crunchy ones. Oh, and her wind isn't particularly trapped - it's blowing free ?

You're right though - it can't be nice for her. What do you recommend?

No, it's not normal. People think it's normal because most dogs are on some sort of commercial diet these days, so it is a common problem.

What food was she on before and what 'dental reasons' mean you have had to change?

OK, so it is a wheat based food, with lots of 'animal derivatives' that aren't necessarily digestible. I would try ;

adding a spoonful of live, natural yoghurt to each meal, to see if that helps

or

changing to a brand of food where, when you look at the ingredients list it doesn't use vague terms like cereals or meat and animal derivatives, but uses specific terms like rice, and chicken. Foods with proper labelling TEND to be the more digestible. I would like at brands like james Wellbeloved, Nutro, things like that. Or Oscars of course! www.oscars.co.uk (I'd be looking at the Maize, chicken and rice etc - that range)

L
xx

She's an old dog and we want her to keep her teeth. As she won't let us clean them with a brush and won't eat dental chews and the like we were advised to give her a dry diet to help keep them clean.

Thanks Lois, I'll try Wellbeloved - it did the job for our cat when he had a dicky tummy. Mind you, he eats everything these days - including the dog food if we're not careful.

Dental chews etc are unlikely to really help anyway, and although kibble exercises the jaw it is rarely chewed enough, nor abrasive enough to clean the teeth.

You might find it hard at 14, as she will be used to eating commercial foods, but have you considered changing her to a raw diet to help with her teeth? I changed mine to raw for lots of reasons, but ulitmately because of filthy teeth and bad breath. It's not as much of a faff as it sounds, and you can part do it to get the benefits to the teeth if you don't want to go all in.

There is some info here:

http://www.ukbarfclub.co.uk/

www.rawmeatybones.com

Otherwise I would suggest Orijen as a kibble. It is one of the very few brands available in the UK that contain no cereal, just 70% meat and 30% fruit and veg.

https://www.zooplus.co.uk/shop/pet_food/orijen?gclid=CK6P2NvLqZUCFQ1UQgodXwqIkg

Failing that, James Wellbeloved is probably your best bet out of other kibbles, as it contains one of the highest meat contents (still only 26% though) and they also do a cereal free one now aswell.

Cereal free is your best bet for avoiding horrible wind. Mine don't get windy at all now, unless they have eaten turkey.

Dental chews etc are unlikely to really help anyway, and although kibble exercises the jaw it is rarely chewed enough, nor abrasive enough to clean the teeth.

You might find it hard at 14, as she will be used to eating commercial foods, but have you considered changing her to a raw diet to help with her teeth? I changed mine to raw for lots of reasons, but ulitmately because of filthy teeth and bad breath. It's not as much of a faff as it sounds, and you can part do it to get the benefits to the teeth if you don't want to go all in.

There is some info here:

http://www.ukbarfclub.co.uk/

www.rawmeatybones.com

Otherwise I would suggest Orijen as a kibble. It is one of the very few brands available in the UK that contain no cereal, just 70% meat and 30% fruit and veg.

https://www.zooplus.co.uk/shop/pet_food/orijen?gclid=CK6P2NvLqZUCFQ1UQgodXwqIkg

Failing that, James Wellbeloved is probably your best bet out of other kibbles, as it contains one of the highest meat contents (still only 26% though) and they also do a cereal free one now aswell.

Cereal free is your best bet for avoiding horrible wind. Mine don't get windy at all now, unless they have eaten turkey.

You will probably find very little benefit to her teeth though, with any kibble, to be honest.

Thanks? - I'll look into that.

My greyhound (well known for delicate tummies and farting issues) does much better on JBW than any other dry food we've tried - hardly any pumpypants action. Happy bum equals happy dog and happy owner [laugh}

A word of warning, though - the duck mix is far too rich for him, he finds the turkey one much easier to diget.

She's a lurcher, isn't she? They're well-known for their delicate tums. A lot of lurchers don't cope well with a rich wet food, out of my 2 Indie is fine but we can't feed Dexter wet food as he gets runny poo and terrible farts. Similarly, I can't give Dex too many treats as it adversely affects his tum. We fed him Pedigree as a pup, he was pooing 3-4 times a night and it was just too rich for him.

I'd second Wellbeloved or Burns. both of mine have enjoyed those.

That's useful too - Pen's a lurcher, so I guess her digestion is not so different from a grey.

I'd like to echo Midori and suggest a raw diet. I don't know if gas is age related because my dog is only 9 months but she eats raw and I can count on one hand the number of times she has passed gas (that I have acknowleged!) and her breath is almost odourless. We have a brand of food over here called Nature's Variety that sells pre-measured amounts of frozen raw meat so all I have to do is defrost the food and give her 2 measures, twice a day. It's very easy and not disgusting at all. Our dog trainer also told us that it is misleading to say that kibble cleans the teeth - he said it's like a human trying to clean their teeth with crackers.

I think it would be unusual for it to be said that eating kibble cleans the teeth. The point is that wet food sticks to the teeth a lot more than kibble. Therefore the deposits are simply not left on the teeth like they are with wet foods. So, while kibble doesn't clean teeth, it reduces the amount of deposits that ae left on the teeth, juts by the very nature of being dry.

L
xx

I have heard/read it a lot that kibble 'helps keep teeth clean' and 'cleans teeth'.

I'm more than happy with the effect of the dry food on her teeth - they're a lot cleaner all ready and she only smells at one end now. Whether kibble cleans or just doesn't dirty as much is immaterial really - however it works, her teeth are cleaner.

Anyway, thanks everyone for your comments - loads of info here as always. I'm going to investigate other brands and see how we go. I'm really not keen on the idea of raw food so that would be very much a last resort; apart from anything else we'd have to change her diet everytime we took her on holiday, and I want her to have something much more routine in her twilight years.