EPI IN CENTRAL AMERICA

[Martin]

Hi, my name is Martin. I am from Costa Rica but I live in Panama. My dog is 1.5 years old. I would like to know if someone from Costa Rica or Panama has deal with this problem (EPI), so maybe can help me with finding the correct products. Because it has been so complicated with the vet. I can find here Creon and raw pancreas and maybe some recomendations of products I could order by amazon. Thank you and sorry for my bad english if I made some mistakes.

[Olesia711]

HI Martin,
No need to apologize about your English ... it is very good!

ENZYMES for EPI
My guess is that porcine pancreatic powder for dogs is not available to you in Costa Rica or Panama.... and i am assuming CREON is not that expensive there.... so i would suggest getting CREON 10 or CREON 12, open up the capsule, sprinkle on "moist" food, do not mix and serve the food with CREON immediately.

Give this a few days to see if the poos improve.
If not... there are 2 more things to try....one at a time...

1. you can try giving 1+1/2 capsules (or 2 capsules) sprinkled on top of the food and serve immediately ... OR
2. before trying more enzymes, you can try giving the CREON capsule whole about 3 to 5 minutes before you give the meal.

FOOD
Many people in the USA have access to all kinds of grain free food which is where we find "low fiber" content food...., but i realize that grain free food is limited in other countries....and actually if you can feed home-made food ......home-made or raw is often much better that commercial food... as long as you include proper vitamins, minerals and bone.

If you do/want or can find a low fiber food in Costa Rica.... you need to looks at the ingredients and guaranteed analysis. Look for something that:
*has 4% or less fiber content
*does not have corn, oatmeal, wheat, barley, quiona, or a lot of peas. Even rice is not good, although some dogs can handle a little bit of rice.
*look for something made with sweet potato or white potato as the carbohydrate/filler in the food
*avoid any food that lists "peas" or pea something in the first 3 ingredients.... and avoid food that has more than 2 or 3 peas/legumes ingredients after the *4th or 5th items list in the ingredients.

OR..... if you want to home feed, let me know how much your dog weighs, and i will work out a home made diet for your dog that you can show your vet, make sure he/she approves and you can feed your dog.

When feeding an EPI dog, in the beginning, you need to feed approximately 150% of what the dog would normally require.....to help replenish the weight it has lost. Once this is accomplished, then you can reduce the amount of food to normal amounts.

When feeding an EPI dog, in the beginning you have to feed smaller meal portions .... BUT... since you are feeding more food, you then need to feed multiple meals throughout the day. We suggest breakfast (before you go to work), lunch (when you come home from work) and dinner (about an hour before you go to bed)... this is assuming that you are not home during the day... if you are home, then feed 3 or 4 meals throughout the day with what works best for your schedule.

B12
Over 80% of all EPI dogs have low B12 and need lots of B12 vitamins. If you can have the B12 blood test done, that would be wonderful... so that you can figure out exactly how low (if it is low) the B12 is and address it from there. If you cannot test the B12.... then i would just go ahead and give B12. If you dog does not need B12 supplementation, then he will just pee out any excess B12.

SO.... If your vet can sell you a bottle of B12 serum (Cynacobalamin or Hydroxycobalamin) and show you how to give the injections, that would be great. You would do this weekly (for now). If this is not possible... contact Wonderlabs in the USA and i am pretty sure they will ship to Costa Rica /Panama.... contact them directly and talk to them to make sure. This is the product that you want to purchase:.
https://www.wonderlabs.com/itemleft.php?itemnum=K9688
The dosing instructions for injectible B12 is the same as these special B12 capsules: the instructions on on this page https://epi4dogs.com/b12-protocol/ , but i also cut and pasted the dosing guidelines for you.


B12 dose for EPI dogs is given by dog's weight.

SID
SID is small intestinal dysbiosis. All dogs with EPI have SID to one degree or another. We only treat SID when necessary (until we can figure out how to get rid of it!) in the meantime, we do our best to keep it in "good" control. This means that once the enzymes are given and working, if you are still dealing with loose stools (yellowish stools, slime on the stools, etc) farting, upset stomach, burping, vomiting, lethargy, no weight gain, etc. etc. ) then your EPI dog's SID is out of control.
First..... we suggest giving a prebiotic.... if that doesn't work, then we suggest giving a prebiotic+probiotic (currently we are recommending Proviable or Visbiome) but if your vet cannot get either of these probiotics, then ask if he has Forti-FLora. i do not know if you need a prescription for these if you order from Amazon... but that might be a possibility.
Second..... if probiotics do not help (you will need to give these are few weeks at least)... then the next thing is for the vet to prescribe Tylan antibiotic ( Tylosin Tartrate Soluble powder antibiotic). Tylan is originally made for pigs, chickens and honey bees, but they also use it on dogs (and cats!) for SID. Please tell your vet to NOT use Metronidazole (Flagyl) on an EPI dog for SID because they have recently come out with new research that Metronidazole not only kills all bacteria in the gut, but once you use Metronidazole for this, some of those bacterial strains can never come back, even if you try giving probiotics with those strains. Tylan on the other hand doesn't kill any of the bacteria but rather it is a macrolide antibiotic and therefor it just inhibits the bacterial reproduction.... you can also give probiotics with Tylan.

The problem with EPI dogs is that their gut flora is damaged. They no longer have enough bacteria in their gut flora, but they also do not have a wide variety of bacteria in their gut... this is why you have to be careful not to give antibiotics that are going to kill everything and now promote probiotics if needed.
The problem with probiotics though is that to date they make the same probiotics to treat all dogs and unfortunately each dog's gut flora is individual- -they are not all the same. Hopefully soon they will come up with targeted probiotics... instead of selling us all the same stuff in hopes that it "might" work.

You can order Tylan from Amazon but your vet will have to "approve" the prescription.... https://www.chewy.com/tylan-soluble-pow ... _XEALw_wcB


Hope this helps get you started... and PLEASE be sure to share everything we are suggesting to you with your vet. Actually if your vet has time, have him visit our site and read the research tabs.. we have the most current EPI research than any other EPI site due mostly to the fact that Epi4Dogs Fdn Inc collaborates with veterinarian researchers and follow Texas A&M Gastrointestinal Lab EPI protocols.

[Martin]

Wow... Thank you very much. I found this site yesterday and its amazing. A lot of information and testimonials than even the vets here doesn't know about EPI.

Unfortunately the different vets that saw my dog gave him a lot Of antibiotics, including METRONIDAZOL.

My dog has around 7 months since he started whit the diarrhea and losing weight.

I bought a grain free food, with the specifications you suggested. Also I ordered on Amazon Pet Factor B-12. And I have access here to raw bovine pancreas. I saw in this forum a way to give my dog this raw pancreas so I am goi g to try it. Also I bought Creon 10000.

[Olesia711]

Thank you for the update... i was hoping to hear back from you!

Commercial pill form bovine pancreas doesn't work very well... BUT if you are planning on using raw bovine pancreas that should work...(i copied and pasted below some instructions we have on using raw pancreas ). The CREON always works although you might have to try different techniques with it before you achieve success with it.

Just remember that enzymes need to be given with EVERY meal - -do not give food or treats without enzymes....

here are the instructions for using raw pancreas:

FEEDING RAW PANCREAS: If you would like to try using raw pancreas; fresh beef, pork or lamb pancreas are recommended. Raw BEEF Pancreas is available for purchase in the USA at http://www.hare-today.com/ or http://www.greentripe.com/ , and new resource as of 2012 on the USA eastern coast is http://www.greencuisine4pets.com/products.htm . There is also an amazing selection of raw pancreas at: https://www.mypetcarnivore.com/ . If you are in the U.K. you can look into http://rawtogo.co.uk/ . One to three or four ounces of raw pancreas can replace one teaspoon of pancreatic extract. Raw pancreas may be frozen in cubes for future use and thawed naturally, but never heat on the stove or in the microwave.

If possible beef or lamb raw pancreas is recommended over pork pancreas because of the “possibility” of the transmission of pseudorabies, although rare.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudorabies

Also… raw pancreas is not all the same. Each and every gland has a different potency of enzymes. This is not just species to species. The potency can vary from one farm animal to another farm animal as well. If you use 1 ounce of raw pancreas with the batch you are currently using the next batch may need to be tweaked. Fresh pancreas has a shelf life (in the freezer) of up to 3 months.

Adding enzymes to a raw fed meal:
Since raw food is harder to measure by the cup since the densities of different meat/bones will require different levels of enzymes, it is easiest to go by weight rather than amount! ” To add the enzymes, you can either puree a portion of the raw meat and add the enzymes to that pureed slurry and pour over the remainder of the raw food, let sit for 20 minutes and serve, or you can add the enzymes to something like yogurt/kefir and either add to the food as mentioned above, or serve the enzymed slurry first ahead of the meal. Try both to see which works best with your EPI dog. (Thank you Cait for these great suggestions!).

Sorry to hear that your dog received a lot of antibiotics, including Metronidazole, but that's understandable when the vets are trying to figure out what is wrong and the dog is sick... just going forward, don't have your vet treat the loose stools with Metronidazole anymore .... just use Tylan is you have to use an antibiotic for diarrhea.

[Madelon]

Hi Martin! Welcome to our EPI family Your pup is adorable. I reached out to Suj with Chemeyes and she believes she can ship the enzyme powder to Panama - she said she has shipped to Brazil so she believes she can ship to you as well. Here's a link to her website - you can message her for any questions - she is extremely helpful and amazing https://www.chemeyes.co.uk/

[Martin]

Thank you very much for the information. I really appreciate it. I am Going to visit the website.

Tobby has responded very well to treatment. Creon, raw pancreas and the new food. I used to find 8-10 stools every morning (diarrhea). In the last three days I had only find one or two and with a different aspect, more solid. I am very happy. I hope these works and he starts gaining weight.

I'm still waiting for the Pet Factor B12 I ordered, and now I'm going to follow your advice about the enzymes.

[Olesia711]

Hi Martin,

That is so good to hear that the 8 to 10 poop a day have been reduced to 1 or 2 poops a day..... that is GREAT!

Hope things continue to improve and Please continue to keep us posted !

[Madelon]

Glad to hear things have improved so much! Whatever you are doing is working so I would stick with it Keep us posted on how things are going.

[Martin]

Hi

Just want to thank you for all. It's amazing how Tobby has been getting well since I started following your recommendations. Today he went to the vet, and after 14 days of consuming raw pancreas, B12 and the new food, he has gain 6.6 pounds. He is very active again and constantly want to play. Hair loss has decreased also. I am very happy, and I hope he continues to improve.

TOBBYMARZO21-2.jpg (1.81 MiB) Viewed 2451 times

[Olesia711]

WOW!!!! This is wonderful news!!!

So glad to hear that Tobby is doing well and has responded to our suggestions.... Keep up the good work and please continue to keep us posted!.

BTW... he looks GREAT! Thanks for posting the picture of Mr. Tobby..... it's always nice to see them happy and back to playing once again