Hair Style

Gio has gas. Not just normal toots, but "peel-the-paint-from-the-wall-run-for-your-life-clear-the-room-hangs-like-a-thick-fog-over-the-ground ass fumes of death"! Serious, not exaggerating even a teensy bit! It's to the point that Romeo won't even sleep on the bed with him anymore. If this keeps up Gio will be spending the nights in his crate, which he hasn't done at home since he was a wee pup.

He had another vet check today, it was time to get his phenobarbital levels tested to see how things are progressing there. I told the vet about the flatulence and she thought it was just him adjusting to the new food (ie. canned yuck). I guess that makes sense. He was on antibiotics for a week, so that probably killed off a good handful of his normal gut flora. Then he was abruptly switched from a home-made raw diet to a canned rice-y mush diet. So, if that is the case, why not switch him now while he is adjusting and just be done with it. His bloodwork has all indicated that he is making a good recovery, so I'm goint to start switching him to a better diet slowly.

I've done a good bit of research into home-made pancreatic diets, and there are three main diets that I have come across.

Dr. Dodds' Liver Cleansing Diet (also good for pancreatitis)
Dr. Billinghurst Pancreatic Diet
Monica Segal's pancreatic diet (since this one, to my knowledge, is not posted online, I will not go into detail about it, rather refer interested people to her book "Monica Segal's Optimal Nutrition")

The basic idea behind all the diets is high veggie content and lean meat in small quantities (~25%). Dr. Dodds and Monica Segal strongly recommend a cooked diet in situations of pancreatitis. Dr. Billinghurst recommends raw. Since the proportions of veggie to meat are roughly the same in all three diets, I've adapted them a bit to form a diet that I can manage and maintain.

I've just started making my first batch, here is what I've done:

Pushed 4.5lb of raw cabbage, zucchini, white potato, sweet potato, carrot, spinach, apple, and broccoli through a juicer, collecting all the juice and pulp in a large bowl. Added 3 crushed digestive enzyme tablets. It's currently sitting in the fridge.
Thawing on the counter are 2lb of cod filets and about 1/4lb raw beef liver. I will poach the cod and braise the liver, chop and mix into the veggie slop.
Portion and freeze.
I've purchased a infant's liquid multivitamin which I will give once daily as per Dr. Dodds' Liver Cleansing Diet. Also a probiotic capsule twice a day to help him adjust after the antibiotics.

I have no idea how much Gio will have to eat. I'm guessing something like 2 cups per day, so this will likely last me a week or so. I'll have to measure it all out later to know for sure. I've got about 7 cans of the yuck left over, so I will be giving roughly half and half canned and home-made until the cans are all gone. Then hopefully we can just continue on with the home-made, gradually increasing the amount of meat in proportion to veggie over the next couple of months. I'm planning on taking this very slowly, probably sticking with at least a portion of the diet as veggie in the end though I would like to get the meat up to at least half of the diet over time, and eventually switch to raw again. But that may be a year or so from now before we switch. Told ya I was planning on going slowly! As severe as Gio's pancreatitis was, I don't want to take the risk of going too quickly in getting him back onto a carnivore's diet!