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Canine Autoimmune Hemolytic Anemia (AIHA & IMHA) - To Johnny and Tessie
Johnny, I really am conernced at the amount of liver you are feeding Tessie, see Patrices note below. Everything I have reasearched confirms this. "Liver is dosed at no more than 1 ounce per 10 lbs of dog per week). Laurie |
| Laurie CA |
| That would mean that Tessie would only get 3.5 ounces/day cause she weighs 36 pounds. I wonder how much 3.5 ounces in approx. Anyone know? Thanks for the concern Laurie. The doctor originally told me to give her a full cup a day. Said it would be alright while she was sick with this disease. I erred on the side of caution and halfed that amount after about a month. Johnny & Tessy |
| Johnny |
| Hi Johnny, 3.5oz is less than 1/2 cup. Ella |
| Ella Seattle |
| The major concern usually with too much liver is diarrhea <VBG>. The generally recommended amount for normal healthy dogs is 1 ounce per 10 lbs of dog PER WEEK. So at 36 lbs divided by 10 lbs = 3.6 ounces per week. Round that up to about 4 ounces or 1/4 pound. A little more isn't going to hurt your dog and your vet probably is right about trying to up the storage of iron for a short period of time. I would say a half cup of fresh liver is probably about 1-1.5 ounces? Cooked would be more like 2-3 ounces (shrinkage)? Here's what I would do. Buy 1 lb liver, divide into 4 small containers. Freeze 3 and use one per week. Depending on the health of your dog and your personal level of "ickiness" you can give this raw or can cook it. Some dogs will not eat it raw and love it cooked. If your dog is ill, it should be cooked. You can actually dry this on a low oven and use it for treats, another great way to get it into the diet. Beef heart is also good for dogs, because of taurine, but is hard to find at stores. Now, there are a few reasons why you wouldn't want to use liver in the diet: If a dog has a liver shunt, where the blood vessels from the digestive organs are bypassing the liver instead of delivering blood for processing directly to the liver, you want to avoid 1. high levels of protein in the diet 2. meats that contain a lot of red blood. Also, if the liver is compromised and shows high levels of enzymes (alt and alkph) on the chem screen (due to prednisone), you might want to spare the liver the job of processing this very rich food for now or only give a small amount of it. In this case, Pet Tinic is the way to go along with Dr. Dodds liver cleansing diet. An interesting observation by some folks is that they have heard the the liver processes toxins so that must mean that liver sold in the meat dept must contain toxins. This isn't really true. The liver processes the toxins but doesn't store any. Toxins may end up being stored in body fat. What the liver does store are many important nutrients like vit A, D, E, B12 and minerals like copper and iron. Some breeds, for instance, (or a dog with a liver shunt) can store too much copper which causes toxicity. Dogs metabolize and utilize vit A in a slightly different way than humans do. While humans store most of their excess vit A in the liver, dog's blood levels of A are higher (70% vs 30%) than ours without it being toxic to them. For that matter, some breeds have an a much high requirement of circulating vit A and a deficiency in these breeds can show up as coat or skin problems. While both humans and dogs would find a 50,000 IU vit A level toxic very quickly, depending on the size, dogs can utilize anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 IU on a daily basis! Speculation is that this arose from wild dogs (wolfs) eating a lot of liver from a kill at one time. enough patrice |
| Patrice NYS |
This thread was discussed on 18/04/2009
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