# Skin problems, loosing weight after switching to Acana and soft stool



## A.S (Apr 27, 2015)

Hi everyone! I have not been active for a while but this is kinda my last resort. I have no clue if I am doing the right thing for my dog and I am asking for some advice, opinions, your experience... Now I know some people will look at my message, see all this text and find it a bit much to read through but please, I want to explain everything that I think is importaint to really understand whats going on. :-\

Firstly, our boy is 1 year and 7 months. We have been feeding him Arion - salmon and rice untill 2 weeks ago. More about the switch later on..
He has had skin problems last year during summer but they went away during the autumn, figured it was just grass. 
This summer, about two months ago, the popped up again. Starts with small circular rashes, a bit red, irritated, like mosquito bites but a bit smaller. Then on those same spots he gets very dry, flaky and in the end he looses hair right where the spots were but by then the skin is not irritated anymore. This occurs mostly on his chect area and his back but a few spots on top of his head and some on the legs. He can not reach his back while scratching but he tries to nibble where its itching. He licks his chest ocasionaly, where he can reach and bites his legs a bit. ??? 
We were at the vets where they scraped a sample of his skin to check for demodex, looked at it with a microscope but it came out clear which is why I assumed it had to be the food... I could not stand him seeing loosing more and more hair so I decided to take a leap of fait and switch to Acana Grasslands. I thought it was most likely either salmon or the grains that did not suit him so I thought why not get rid of both... 
Now a week since the switch he has started to loose a lot of weight. He wasnt all muscle before either but now it feels like he is all bones... :-[ 
His spine is showing and all of his ribs are visible. The hairless spots just add to it and all I can see in front of me is one unhealthy pup... The first week I was feeding according to the guidelines on the bag. For active 30kg dog the write 390g and for less active 240g per day. He was 29kg and not very active but not less active either so I opted for the middle and decided to give him 300g. With the old food he would get 400g in one meal in the evening, if fed twice he wouldnt eat for some reason so the breeder said we can feed him once a day so that he gets hungry... Recently I read on the internet that being fed once a day he might not have gotten enough nutrition from the food so I though while we are already switching we can try to go back to feeding twice a day. No problems eating now (it is Acana after all). Either way... after a week I noticed the weight loss and have now gone up to feeding 210g twice a day, making it 420g in total.
Since we switched the stool has been a bit softer but now since I raised the amount he is getting it is not only soft, it comes out like freaking ice cream from a machine and he has been pooping twice sometimes three times a day in large amounts. I think that is not normal as he used to poop max twice a day and not much at all on his old food. 
But I know acana is better and I really do not want to switch again as I literaly do not know what to switch to. I would not want to try Orijen as I think it is a bit too rich but Acana was perfect. On paper...
Maybe worth mentioning that he has been getting meaty bones on average once a week since we got him so we will continue with that. We buy lamb ribs and turkey necks.

Also, regarding hair loss, I may be a bit paranoid now but I have noticed in the last month that he is loosing some whiskers here and there. I may be paying more attention to it now than before as he does have other problems but still, unsure how normal that is... :-\

I just do not know what to do next so I am hoping for some encouraging words and tips! :-[

Greetings from Sweden and thank you for thaking the time to read and answer!!


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## organicthoughts (Oct 9, 2012)

Switch to a raw diet if you can. It will likely bolster his immune system and resolve these issues.


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## tknafox2 (Apr 2, 2013)

My first V was allergic to both salmon and chicken, even though she age chicken as a pup, when she got to be over a year is when the bumps appeared. We fed her strictly lamb, everything, and were very careful to check ingredients for any sign of poultry or fish. She did love her eggs though, which did not seem to affect her, and helped her coat tremendously. I also found a weed, that she was very allergic to, in the yard we played every day. It is related to a thistle. Once I eradicated that weed, it was helpful as well.
This is a really tough one for you. I sure hope you find the cause, and a solution. You may try rubbing coconut oil on the bumps, I believe Coconut oil is some what of a magic potion. you could put a little bit in her food too.


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## A.S (Apr 27, 2015)

Switching to raw is sadly not an option for us at the moment, no matter how much I wish we could. :-\ Read a lot about it but we would not be able to get all the variety of meat and organs that is needed... 
We live in a flat so we do not have a huge freezer either. He now gets a third of the space in it for his bones 

Yeah, I know chicken often comes up with allergies so we did not want to feed him that from the start. The first bag of food we got from the breeder had chicken but then we stuck to salmon. Could be that he was reacting so severely to as well. I am just not smart enough at this point.
As mentioned we live in a flat and do not have a yard but we go out for walks in the woods all the time so it is impossible to know what exactly it could be IF it is grass... ???
He has been getting a big teaspoon of coconut oil with his food the past week and when the bumps were still red we sprayed with apple cider vinegar (heard it was good for irritated skin) and when the bumps went dry we smeared then with coconut oil but now its just hairless spots... :-[ 
Any more home remedies we could try at this point? :-\

PS: noticed I wrote under "general vizslas" while this could be more suited for the topic about problems. Any way to more this thread there or is it ok here?


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## hecallsmebama (Mar 31, 2016)

I'm no expert, but I'm starting to see a trend with these bumps. I've posted on some of the recent threads about how Amos developed these a couple of months ago (ironically, about a month after a round of antibiotics) and coconut oil (fed to him) wiped them out in a couple of days and they haven't returned since I've been feeding it to him. Granted, he did not have a horrible case of them, but coconut oil is an anti-fungal. Fungus and bacteria should be in balance, which is why I mentioned the antibiotics. Once bacteria is wiped out, fungus has an advantage. 

If you search this forum and read ALL the threads on these bothersome bumps, you find that folks talk about them being worse in the heat and in the summer or in the humidity.....which is were fungus thrives. I found it interesting that the guy who posted most recently about these whose V was covered in them lived in the Florida keys, a very hot humid locale. I would be curious if anyone has battled them in the cold winter months to the same extent they do in the summer???

The other component may be an allergy. I know from our own family's health struggles that allergies are thought to be triggered by fungal infections. In addition, one is more susceptible to infection (including fungal) when their immune system is compromised by something like an allergy. So it's a chicken and the egg thing, a cycle that must be broken. I'm wondering if it's not the same for dogs.


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## hecallsmebama (Mar 31, 2016)

Also A.S., are there new bumps forming since you started the coconut oil? Amos had the bald spots for a while but now the hair has grown back. If you don't have any new ones forming, I would think the hair would fill back in. Apple Cider Vinegar is suppose to be an anti fungal as well, so I can't imagine it wouldn't help if fungus is the culprit.


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