Epi4Dogs

Our boy Lucky has had EPI since he was a young pup. We have had it under control for a year or two now. Some time ago, we noticed his nails would peel back around the edges. Vet said he has some kind of brittle nail disease. She pulled out her vet book and showed us the details it had on it. She recommends us feeding him several kinds of vitamins that can help make his nails as strong as possible, per the book. This was like 9 months ago. I think it's better but definitely not 100%. We would take him to daily daycare if it wasn't for his nails. He has so much energy and loves daycare. But doesn't go anymore to prevent issues.

Has anyone else experienced this? I wasn't sure if this was related to EPI or not. I do give him a b12 shot every 2 weeks.

Side note, there is a lot of stuff out there about all dogs being healthier if you give them pre/probiotics and digestive enzymes. If you search Amazon, lots of stuff come up, like one from Purina and one from Nusentia, which both combine have like over 5,000 reviews. Has anyone tried stuff like this? I don't know if it would make a difference with Lucky but we have another normal dog that licks all the time, wants to eat poop, acts like we are starving him, etc. This group is much more educated than most dog owners so I thought I would ask.

Curtis

Our GSD had exactly the same, they would also split and get ragged.
I researched and found Onychotin (biotin). We have been giving her this for 6 months, one per day and there is a huge improvement.

we had this with another shepherd but not Kara

will reach out for you

j

When you give your dogs vitamins, do you mix it in the food and enzymes and let them "cook" together? or do you add the vitamins after the food has cooked?

To the best of my knowledge there’s no need to incubate vitamins with the food. I give Doc his vitamins right before I give him his food.

As for pre/probiotics every dog’s gut flora is different. I think most of the recent research suggests it’s more important to give a prebiotic as it gives the good bacteria something to feed off of. If you give a probiotic you want one that has a prebiotic with it and start out with half the recommended dose - watch the poops so you’ll know if Lucky can tolerate it or not.

have a read of this

https://www.petmd.com/dog/conditions/sk ... d_disorder

Thanks for the replies. Does anyone see any harm in incubating the vitamins/chews? We've always done that as it's easier. Make up several meals at once in bowls with lids and just add medicine during meal time.

I throw my B12 in as the enzymes incubate and so far no problems with this method. I'm not sure about the other vitamins as I haven't tried them.

We usually throw the B12 pill on his food right before serving. I don't know if there are issues with incubating the vitamins with the food.

Barb

I don't think there is any problem with incubating the vitamins - the problem would likely be only if there is a medication that needs to be incubated and you don't. I will double check this with Olesia our founder and director of research and get back to you.