Wimpy enzymes working?
Posted: 18 Jun 2022, 12:52
Hi everyone,
I am so appreciative of this site and its community.
Our dear sweet 19 mo. old long coat GSD, Chekhov, had intermittent loose stools his whole life, but seemed happy, healthy and strong, steadily gaining weight as he grew.
We are lucky in that he got worse suddenly and was diagnosed quickly: A couple weeks ago, he had extreme diarrhea for one week and lost 7 pounds. Vet put him on antibiotics and bland diet. When he didn't fully get better the second week(stools still loose), the vet tested for EPI so we found out fast. Lucky to have appt with a recently retired, very experienced vet who was filling in for someone! I've read a lot of horror stories when they don't think to test for this.
We are now waiting for the presctipion pancreatic enzymes to come in the mail. While waiting for the test, I went ahead and bought some inexpensive porcine pancreatic enzymes, that are extremely low in dosage (Dr. Mercola enzymes for cats and dogs). As an example, one of the enzymes is 8750 units (per tsp) compared to 388,000 in the recommended, prescription type! But weirdly, they firmed his poop up noticeably — and when I doubled the dose, the poop was even more firm. Looking almost completely normal!
Wondering....do these low-dose enzymes seem to work because the dog is JUST getting serious symptoms recently? Or, that his TLI is out-of-range but not extremely low? (it is 2.9)
Any thoughts or comments are greatly appreciated!
And what is it about these EPI "heart" dogs? This guy is the most loving, affectionate dog I've ever had!
Many thanks,
RMM
I am so appreciative of this site and its community.
Our dear sweet 19 mo. old long coat GSD, Chekhov, had intermittent loose stools his whole life, but seemed happy, healthy and strong, steadily gaining weight as he grew.
We are lucky in that he got worse suddenly and was diagnosed quickly: A couple weeks ago, he had extreme diarrhea for one week and lost 7 pounds. Vet put him on antibiotics and bland diet. When he didn't fully get better the second week(stools still loose), the vet tested for EPI so we found out fast. Lucky to have appt with a recently retired, very experienced vet who was filling in for someone! I've read a lot of horror stories when they don't think to test for this.
We are now waiting for the presctipion pancreatic enzymes to come in the mail. While waiting for the test, I went ahead and bought some inexpensive porcine pancreatic enzymes, that are extremely low in dosage (Dr. Mercola enzymes for cats and dogs). As an example, one of the enzymes is 8750 units (per tsp) compared to 388,000 in the recommended, prescription type! But weirdly, they firmed his poop up noticeably — and when I doubled the dose, the poop was even more firm. Looking almost completely normal!
Wondering....do these low-dose enzymes seem to work because the dog is JUST getting serious symptoms recently? Or, that his TLI is out-of-range but not extremely low? (it is 2.9)
Any thoughts or comments are greatly appreciated!
And what is it about these EPI "heart" dogs? This guy is the most loving, affectionate dog I've ever had!
Many thanks,
RMM