Skip to main content

Less Sit and Scoot

"Poop Van Scoop. We pick up where your dog leaves off. Number one in the number two business." -A long-running ad for backyard sanitation services.

Readers, if a post about canine gastrointestinal problems (read: pooping problems) isn't your cup of tea, why don't you read this post about how music made me feel better than the 20 pills a day I was taking at one point in my life.

I've always had dogs, but I never had one who would sit and scoot, until Molly. Dogs do this when their anal glands are too full; conventional wisdom says that hard, small stools cause the problem by not pressing on the anal glands enough to empty them. I just knew that every so often, I had to take Molly to the vet to have them drained. Sometimes they even became infected, or "full and stinky" in veterinary terms.

For the past few years, I've been fiddling with Molly's diet to help her poop be less like jawbreakers. From what I'd read about digestion, I thought the answer involved fat and fiber. I wanted to keep non-fiber carbs low because Molly puts on weight easily. (She was once stray and on a starvation diet for who knows how long--that surely didn't help her metabolism.) I know a person (and a dog, I presume) can have a few extra pounds and be healthy. But Molly has two congenital heart defects and really doesn't need blood sugar spikes or extra fat around her organs.

I finally created a diet that allows Molly to poop easily, doesn't spike her blood sugar (I've checked it), and hasn't made her fat. (My vet thinks she's fat; I think she's stocky and furry.) She does sit and scoot now and then, but not nearly as much as she used to, and I haven't had to take her to the vet since I got back from vacation in early June (when her diet was changed). Here's what Molly eats:

Morning:
3/4 cup Taste of the Wild dog food (usually bison flavor; the salmon works well, too)

Evening:
3/4 cup Taste of the Wild dog food
1/2 cup broccoli slaw

Late night:
2 tablespoons flaked coconut, no sugar added

A few times a week:
bacon grease from two or three strips of bacon

Taste of the Wild is grain-free dog food that's made mostly of meat. It's around $2 a pound. It isn't sold at the big chains, but a search on their web site shows there must be thousands of smaller stores in the U.S. and Canada that sell it. It's available online, too.

I give Molly broccoli slaw (which is mostly fiber) with her dog food because you need fat (from the dog food) to absorb certain vitamins (from the broccoli slaw). (At least, humans require fat to absorb vitamins A, D, E and K, and I assume dogs do also. In any event, I don't see any reason the combination would be harmful to her.) I wait a few hours to give her coconut because it has phytic acid, which can inhibit mineral absorption. (This post has some info on vitamin and mineral absorption.) On days when I didn't give her coconut, she'd sit and scoot, and she sat and scooted more before I started the coconut, so this seems to play an important role.

One last benefit from this diet: I can't remember the last time Molly had smelly gas.

ETA 9/25/10: I'm beginning to think that it's important not to feed Molly too much. When I was on vacation, my neighbor fed her leftover hamburger in addition to her regular diet (and Molly's glands got infected), and whenever I feed her a little extra because she's worked up an appetite at the dog park, she ends up sitting and scooting more. If Molly is extra hungry, I'll try giving her a few spoonfuls of olive oil.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Dana Carpender's Podcast; Dr. Davis on YouTube; Labor Day Sales

Dana Carpender, who's written several recipe books and other works on low-carb, has a podcast and is still writing articles at carbsmart.com. She's a terrific writer and amateur researcher (otherwise known as reading , as Jimmy Dore jokes ). I use her book 500 Low-Carb Recipes all the time and I'm looking forward to hearing more from her. I've embedded her podcast on my blog (click on the three lines at the top right if you don't see it, or go to Spotify or other podcast source if you're getting this by email). Carbsmart.com doesn't seem to have a blog feed, so if you want to see the latest posts there, you can sign up for notifications at their site. Dr. Davis has been putting a lot more videos on YouTube, so I've added his channel to the lineup. Click on the three lines on my blog if you don't see it, or go to his channel here .  * * * * * Primal Kitchen is having a Labor Day sale-- 20% off everything. They sell high quality collagen powder, con...

Fasting blood sugar & insulin have crept up!

It's pretty bad when even conventional medicine thinks your blood sugar is high. I had lab tests done last week, as I do every year, and saw things were going in the wrong direction. Photo from Pixabay . Uh-oh.  Ideal blood sugar is about 70-90. Your blood sugar can be high because you're stressed or ill, but I felt OK. I can't blame it on cortisol, which was smack in the middle of the normal range. And my A1c, which reflects blood sugar over the past few months, shows that whatever is going on has been happening for a while. My insulin is more than double what it should be. Oddly, my triglycerides, which typically indicate carb consumption, were good.  I don't have an explanation for the triglycerides. I should have suspected something was wrong, though. I've felt very tired and a little sad for the past few months. Unlike many people with higher than ideal blood sugar and insulin, I had only gained about three pounds.  Regardless of my good weight and triglyceride...

Interview: The Microbiome's Effect on Almost Everything

Mark L. Cannon, DDS, MS joins Bret Weinstein of the Darkhorse Podcast for a discussion about the oral microbiome and its downstream effects on everything from acne to Alzheimer’s. Dr. Cannon is a pediatric dentist and professor of otolaryngology (ear, nose and throat medicine). It's an hour and 44 minutes, but well worth your time. Link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjkOgCXiMeE

Avoiding a Nightmare by Using Math

The answer lies in trigonometry. -Sherlock Holmes Don't worry if you never learned trigonometry--the answers here lie in arithmetic. Medical test results often come back positive or negative, as if the result were a certainty. Of course, there is the accuracy, but if the accuracy is 99% or so, what does that really mean? That you should get your affairs in order? Before you call your probate attorney, let's take an example from the book Calculated Risks by Gerd Gigerenzer. Let's say you're a 40-something year old woman with no symptoms of breast cancer. You have a positive mammogram. What are the odds you have breast cancer? Using some assumptions about test accuracy and rates of disease based on real data, the odds that you'd have breast cancer are one in eleven according to Gigerenzer. (If you were way off, don't feel bad--most of the physicians Gigerenzer tested were way off, too--and they had the data in front of them. Not that that's comforting in every...

Lousy Mood? It Could be the Food

Here's a funny AMV(1) on what it's like to be depressed, apathetic and overly sensitive. Note: explicit (but funny) lyrics in the video. Hearing this song brought a startling realization: I used to be emo, but with normal clothes. Sulking, sobbing and writing poetry were my hobbies. When I was a kid, my mother said that she wouldn't know what to do to punish me if I had done something wrong. And yet things got worse. Over a two-week period in 1996, my best friend moved away, I lost my job and broke up with my boyfriend. I lost my appetite and lived on a daily bagel, cream cheese and a Coke for the next few months. I had tried counseling, and didn't find it helpful; in fact, I found reviving painful memories was pointless. Not thinking about them, on the other hand, worked wonders. Later on, so did studying philosophy and learning to think through emotions instead of just riding through them. But what's blown away all the techniques is diet. Since I s...