I have not been on this forum in quite a while due to work and other issues. But we could really use your help in helping Bella, who is now 14, as in addition to her severe arthritis, has kidney disease and has been in kidney failure since October (3 months). She is slowly deteriorating but the biggest issue is getting her to eat. She will eat some food vigorously 2-3 times and then doesn't even want to smell it the next time. We have gone through at least 20 different foods from the store as well as tuna, chicken and rice, everything we can think of but to no avail. She is now down to 17 pounds and the only thing she seems to want to eat is, of all things, fortune cookies from Chinese take out.
Has anyone gone through this with their Sheltie? Any advice would be very much appreciated.
Yeah, it basically sounds like what we went through with Fasb. His eating issues started well before his lab work started showing problems. The last two years of his life, he ate well, but you couldn't just put a bowl of kibble down and leave it. He'd eat, but we'd have to sit there and coax him to get started, or add something to it, or give him something instead of kibble. He liked variety. We had to keep changing up the routine or adding something new to the food, etc.
He went through phases where he'd eat better, then he'd need some prodding for a few weeks, then he'd eat well. He ate enough to maintain weight (and then some, lol). It was more a matter of how much work we'd have to do to get him to eat.
About a month before he died, we noticed he wasn't eating treats well. Then he stopped eating almost everything except for a few things (beef, chicken, granola, ice cream/yogurt). He ate ok on a mostly chicken diet, but things progressed fast after that point and he stopped eating entirely about three weeks later.
Anyway, everything you describe sounds pretty typical for a dog with kidney disease. If you haven't already read it, you might pick up a copy of Lew Olsen's "Raw and Natural Nutrition for Dogs". We read it too late to help Fasb much, but it had some good advice on feeding dogs with kidney issues.
Here;s the link to the book on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Raw-Natural-N.../ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
My other advice would be to let Bella eat whatever she will eat. From the eating pattern, I'd guess the kidney disease is fairly advanced? We weren't always happy about what Fasb ate in the final weeks and months, but we decided it would be better in the long run to keep him eating and keep his strength up. We tried the kidney-friendly kibble (couple different brands) but he disliked the taste and smell of it and we didn't try to force it on him. We'd offer it, then pick up the bowl and let him eat chicken or tuna or whatever he did seem to have an appetite for. When things got bad, we fed him whatever he showed an interest in. If he'd eat a treat instead of backing away, we'd feed him treats until he stopped eating them. One night, the only thing he'd show interest in was ice cream so we gave him a bowl of ice cream (he didn't appear to be lactose intolerant). Not the recommended sheltie diet, but we decided it was better than not getting him to eat and going hungry.
Good luck. Sorry you're going through this. Fasb just passed away in December, so I can certainly empathize.
