I've just got in some Chappie to try with a deerhound bitch who has frequent loose motions. I've tried her on various dried foods with no improvement. She has been fully vet checked for this, is in good health and maintains a healthy though lean weight. She is 2½ years old and gets a lot of hard exercise. Does anyone who has used Chappie have any advice on how much of it I should feed her?

Is this tinned?  I think it may be quite a lot needed if it is :).  My Dandie, who was quite a large one at about 13kgs ate about a tin over the two meals of the day when she was in her prime and lively.  This was the common sized tins can't remember the weight but I believe you can buy extra large ones.  They all vary so much anyway so I would really suggest you have a stab at a quantity and just see if it seems to satisfy and keep her at a nice weight.

Yes it is the tinned stuff.The tins I've got are the 412 gm ones. They say 4 tins for a 30kg labrador so I was going to try 5 - 6 tins/day and see how she goes on that. I'm a bit reluctant to use it at all as it is advertised as low fat and in my experience hard exercised deerhounds do best on a higher fat diet but I'm at my wits end with this lady. The vet has been over her from top to tail and has done every test in the book. He can find nothing wrong and it is obvious to look at her and see her at work and play that she is healthy. She just squitters. I'm very open to any other suggestions for something that might help.

I think you can only try, Nellie was an extremely well muscled dog and maintained well on it.  If it does stop the loose motions she is going to be getting more of the nutrition anyway.

That's true. At present she gets the same amount as her brother although he is taller and more heavily built so she must be losing some nutrition with her loose motions. I've always found that young deerhounds are quite loose and given the chance to exercise fully they literally run themselves into the runs. :) But by her age they normally have solidified up and her brother did so at 18 months. I've lost count of the foods I've tried her on so far, from gluten free to (supposedly) preservative free. Chappie is the last port of call. :)

As Lior has highlighted, no food comes with a guarantee, every one has a failure somewhere but it certainly gets a lot of testimonials and there has to be some reason why such a stinky, bulkily tinned inconvenient food is still around so has to be worth a try    I'm sure I don't need to mention that you need to introduce it slowly ;)

No, I was planning to introduce it over several days. :) After all the posts about the stink I'm not looking forward to opening the first tin! :)

Not sure if it applies to dogs but when I was a child and one of the lambs had the squitters my friends dad used to feed them a raw egg which seemed to sort them out. I did feed one to our pup once when he had the same problem and that seemed to work as well but he was only like it for one day and we had no idea of the cause of his squits so it could  have just been a coincidence.

I tried Chappie on one of my dogs last night.
It made matters worse for him, runny poos all night, poor little guy.

Im feeding raw from now on.

Hope your deerhound tollerates it better than my dog did.

Hi Jas,

Don't know what weight your girl should be but as a rough guide when I was feeding it fairly regularly (too long ago to remember exactly) my largest male weighed around 25kg and needed two tins of the medium size (the most readily available) daily to keep him lean but sufficiently covered at that weight so I'd imagine quite a bit more for your breed.

regards, Teri :)

So that seems to tie in with the one tin per 12/13 kgs.  As usual, the recommendation offered by the manufacturers looks a bit high :)

Thanks Teri. :) She is a tall well muscled girl who weighs in at ~ 45kgs but deerhounds, even well exercised ones tend to eat less than would be expected for their size and weight. Fortunately they are not inclined to over-eat so I'll try just feeding it to appetite for starters. Hope I have more sucess than Lior had!

Just read your post about the recommended guide for a Lab   Heck that would be one FAT Lab :D

Perhaps the cereal content (or some of them) in it didn't agree with Lior's dog.  Does your girl have an obvious reaction to any particular ingredients?   I found with one of mine that the only way to get firm motions was to drop all grains (apart from rice), and also avoid anything containing soya.  Might be worth a try.

Teri

No she doesn't seem to react to anything in particular. I've had her on rice based food but haven't avoided all soya products so that might be worth a go.

I came across the soya one by accident more than anything - I'd been using Pro-kolin under vet advice and things worsened (soya's added to it for flavour :rolleyes: ).  Soon as I switched to something else and removed all soya problem was solved!  So it might be worth a shot.  Good luck.

regards, Teri  

Hi Teri and thanks. What food did you use that was soya free? As I said above, even if it does work, I'm not that happy about Chappie begin low fat.

Wafcol Salmon & Potato - I add other oily fish to it like sardines, pilchards etc or fresh salmon if it's on offer at supermarket :)

Thanks - that one I haven't tried, but I certainly will. Adding oily fish sounds perfect to raise the fat content.

Had a similar problem with one of my GSDs and have put him on Chappie about 4 weeks ago.  He weighs 34kg and has one of the 1.26kg tins per day split into two meals.  It seems to be doing the trick at the moment.

Thanks chalkey - good to know that it sorted your dog out. If you are feeding 1.26 kg /day to a 34 kg GSD it does sound as if Teri is right and 4 x 812gm tins would be a bit much for a 30kg lab!

It really is a bit trial and error.  I'm trying to put weight on my boy at the moment but if I overfeed him his stools become soft, so I'm trying to strike a happy medium for him.  Good luck with your lab.  Let us know how he gets on.