Opinion on a supplement - Page 1

My vet recommended platinum performance dog nutrition supplement for my 12 month old male Belgian Malinois. Does anyone have experience with this product? I would like some information from other users before I decide to buy some. My Mal is a very picky eater and hard to keep weight on. I feed him Blue Buffalo Wilderness coupled with cooked chicken.He is currently 68 lbs but has lost about 5 lbs in the last month from lack of appetite. All blood work is fine and the vet couldn't find any issues. He's just very picky. I am currently feeding him once a day in the evening. Any advice on the supplement along would be helpful. Thank you in advance.

Five pounds in a month is a lot of weight to lose??  Maybe feed some raw chicken instead of cooked??  Chicken quarters are 70 cents a pound and my dogs love them??  Worm with fenbenzadole (safeguard, panacur) for 5 days in a row.  Whip worms are harder to kill and all but Panacur will miss them and it needs five days in a row.  Make sure he has no worms.  If worming and raw doesn't increase appetite then wonder about tick borne illnesses, etc. .. something seems wrong???  The best supplement is higher quality food (ie not from a bag or a can).

I looked at the Platinum Performance, honestly it starts right out with Flax and Flax seed, and also sunflower oil, Can your dog handle flax?  Sunflower oil is probably not your best option as there was some concerns about it being a cancer carrying oil??  Don't know what that outcome is or was so why take a chance.

I agree with Bubba, change his diet.  YOu will put on better muscle mass and weight with adding leg quarters, you can still use kibble BUT NOT at the same timer.  Split his meals up to 2 times per day, make it easy on yourself, give chicken one meal and if you insist on using kibble, give it at another meal with coconut oil or something like that if he will eat coconut oil.  Good luck  Nan

we used pp a lot for both dogs and horses and like dit a lot. it gets expensive in a hurry, though, and a few years ago we switched to grinding our on flaxseed every night. 50 lbs bag of food grade flaxseed comes to about $40; krups electric grinder to about $20. it's been working very well but you need to keep an eye on your total omega 3-6-9 ratio. about 2-4oz of fresh-ground flax/day seems to do the trick for our dogs.

my twenty months old male gsd is on the lighter side and can easily lose five lbs in a ten day span. every now and then he gets into loss of appetite 'funks' bordering anorexia. fortunately less so now than when he was younger where his worst loss-of-appetite period was between twelve and fifteen months, which also turned out to be his worst and longest pano period.

to get back on track, we found that a) stimulating his appetite with off-schedule feeding not tied to training, in his case turkey necks and sweet potato puree, helps to kick-start his appetite, b) supplement with kronch's pemmikan bars once you got him eating again, c) switch to honest kitchen love (beef) for a few days and then back to his regular orijen red meat, d) add two farm-fresh, range-free eggs/day and finally, e) add a table spoon of organic apple cider vinegar (bragg) to his food, and finally, and probably most importantly, f) train without food for a few days. btw, i got nowhere with either buffalo, totw or straight raw. also, i found that cutting down too much on his training frequency and intensity has an adverse effect on both appetite and weight gain. if you got a lot of muscle loss, you may add some pro-meat 100 for a while as an off-schedule meal. both the pemmikan bars and the pro-meat are low bulk and can be fed throughout the day. hence, you ought to be able to stay with one main feeding and not loose any training sessions throughout the due to pre/post feeding rest. good luck.

Thank you to everyone for the replies and info. I think I will bypass on this performance supplement and try another food instead.  I have tried raw chicken, but my dog can't handle it. His stomach becomes a mess every time I've tried it. I also tried coconut oil and he won't touch his food. He is extremely picky. The vet did check him for worms and he is completely healthy. I've had this issue for the last 2 months or so. He went through a period when he was very hungry, now he just seems to be less interested. It may be the heat (we're in the south) . He's an inside dog but maybe the heat is still an issue.

Bebo:
Question about the turkey necks.Raw or cooked? Aren't they a choking hazard??

I have always found that dogs tend to lose weight when the warmer weather comes and their appetite diminishes. That is probably because mother nature has a hand in this. Wolves eat far less in the summer.  I have always fed my dogs twice a day, morning and night. To entice them to eat, i will top up with some home made chicken stew/or a grain free canned food.  Merrick has a really well priced economy line called Whole Earth Farm ( I think it is called that) and you could mix in half a can with the morning meal and supper meal. Another good thing is adding a capsule of b-12 with the supper meal. B-12 is a miracle vitamin when it comes to appetite and digestion.

Thank you Eldee! I will look into some B 12!

If you are going to look into B-12, you should also look into probiotics and vitamin E for your dog.

Here is a link from the whole dog journal as to why probiotics are so beneficial to our dogs. As well, vitamin E supports the immune system.

Those would be the three things I would recommend as supplemental.

http://www.whole-dog-journal.com/issues/15_3/features/Probiotics-For-Dogs_20473-1.html

 

Ive used many supplements over the years but unfortunately not this one. You have mentioned several times how picky of an eater he is. Ive had a few picky eaters come through rescue but they soon learn that they eat what is fed or they go without. I think we people make this an issue. The reason I mention this, he could get worse. Your constantly trying to appease will make him pickier because he will figure out that you will change the food if he stops eating it. Although I do not care for Blue Buffalo and Ive heard they changed their recipe a few months ago and dogs stopped eating it, find a food that your dog likes and stick to it. If he chooses to not eat, he will eventually.

I've had dogs not eat raw but eventually they got hungry enough and converted. If you want an all around supplement try bee pollin. It wont ad weight but its great for everything else. I've also used Tech Mix cheaper and decent.

Barb

BHaugh,
I will look into the bee pollen! Thank you!