Hello everyone. I've just joined up, so I hope I'm on the right forum here. I've also posted this onto the food and diet forum, I hope that's ok.

Can you help? I have a ten and a half year old Golden Retriever. She is a wonderful, happy affectionate, dog and we love her to bits. Unfortunately, she's had digestive probs for many years now. We give her four small easily digestable meals a day, which her digestive system can cope with. Her occasional bouts of diarrhoea have been kept under control with metronidozol - used to destroy the bacterial overgrowth.

We've been careful only to resort to this treatment when we've been unable to quell the problem by traditional means ie starving, followed by fish and rice. Recently the problem had been getting worse and the bouts of illness more frequent.  We were unwilling to increase the dose of metronidozal until further investigations had been done so decided to change vets as we didn't seem to be getting any further with our existing one. 

Our new vet seems very good and immediately suggested a series of blood tests. The blood tests did show that our golden had bacterial problems in both the large and small intestine. Apparently metronidozole only works on one (can't remember which). She suggested that  this could probably be managed by an ongoing low dose of oxy-care tablets (apparently she has several Goldens and other dogs with the same problems).  We are happy with this as this really is a very, very low dosage and it does seem to be working, as Gertie has had no problems for the last couple of months - something of a record for her.  The blood test was repeated and the levels of bacteria are decreasing which is good.

This is just the background info, so I thank you for sticking with me so far.

The same blood tests unfortunately showed up a liver problem. Her liver function test is twice what it should be. The vet has pointed out that this could be an 'old age' problem. But it obviously could be an indicator of liver disease. We know that this could not have come about through using metronidozol as we only used this three of four times a year. She said that the only way to be sure would be to rest the liver, and to that end suggested a low protein diet.

Before all of this Gertie was on one large tin of Chappie a day (this being the only food she seems to cope with well). With a spoonful of tuna in springwater on the top, plus a handful of healthy biscuits. She also had the odd addition of other tasty healthy, low fat,  things to her meals, like grated carrot or apple. We split into four small meals. This seemed to work well, she looks healthy, is a good weight (but not overweight) and has a lovely shiny coat.

The vet has told us to cut the protein right down for four weeks, when the test will be repeated.  So the poor lass is currently on, one small tin of Chappie a day with boiled rice and biscuits - again, split into four meals.

Having read the posts on this forum and other places on the web, I'm a bit disturbed to find out that the suggestion for encouraging the health of the liver is not to cut out protein, but to give good high quality protein. Before we continue down the route that the vet has suggested, I want to make sure that we're not actually going to make matters worse. Shouldn't we be giving her something that will help the liver repair itself, not just giving it less work to do. And doesn't the liver produce some of the enzymes needed to aid food digestion? It's all a bit of a digestive minefield.

The advent of the internet has given us all the means to research these things, but there's nothing like asking experienced 'doggy' people for help and advice in my book.

I'm sorry this post is so long, and I thank you for sticking with it to the bitter end.

We would go to the ends of the earth for our chum, so I want to be completely sure that any treatment given is completely in her best interests. Of course, if the blood tests remain the same in a few weeks time, she will have to have a biopsy. But we really want to help her as much as we can before we get to that stage.

Thank you all, very much.

Annie

Hi Annie,

Liver problems are, as you probably know already, complex and varied.  There are changes in thought re the protein, my own understanding of this is that the protein should be a high quality source but still a low percentage of the diet.

This link may help http://www.vetinfo.com/dliver.html fill in some blanks for you - there are a few case reports and diet guides there.

I really hope all goes well for your girl - sending healing thoughts.  Teri :)