anal glands

[mattyg 1,862]

had my lurchers anal glands emptied the other week as he was always licking his ass and was a bit swollen. when they were emptied of the usual foul smelling puss the vet gave him an injection of penacillin to combat the obviously infected glands and that was that so to speak. for a few days he was ok but has since started licking his ass again and its swelled slightly again, he is passing normal firm stools so no probs there, im back off to the vet on fri to see if he can put him on a course of anibiotics or somthing. have any of you folks had this problem?

cheers, matt

[sue 1]

what are you feeding him on

[dytkos 17,821]

can have tem taken out for les than £100 my vet says.

[Guest Ditch_Shitter]

My Dogs never have that sort of problem for long, once I get hold of them. Dogs that come to me from a flesh and bone feeding regimen don't have the problem in the first place.

 

A proper diet sorts it and then carries on preventing it according to how nature put Dogs and their diet together. Take that diet out of the equation and / or let a white coat persistantly f*ck about with the poor creatures bum and ye'll end up with recurring problems which Will worsen till they suggest operating to mutilate and remove from the Dog what nature put there for a reason. This is the modern way, of course.

 

Now ye already part way there, look.

 

Get onto google and read all ye can find about " Anal gland impaction " in Dogs. I'm very wary of that op' because I'm not at all sure I didn't discover that that, of itself, leads to a whole new set of problems. Repeated manual manipulation, as you're lining yeself (or the Dog) up for most certainly Does lead to bigger trouble.

[Caravan Monster 323]

Until I saw the light re. feeding, my lurcher had terrible problems with her anal glands. At one point, vet visits were down to every other week, to have them emptied. No fun when the dog freaks out and wipes it' s arse on the nearest soft thing- normally the furniture, or the van seat, is it?

 

I know my dog is tough, in her youth, she could do some hellish long runs on hares, then be ready for some more not long after. But she would always scream the place down when having her anal glands emptied- that procedure must hurt like feck.

 

Swollen anal glands always smell, it doesn' t necessarily mean that they are infected, and the fluid that comes out of them always stinks.

 

No longer feeding processed dog food was absolutely the answer for my dog. That means never, ever, feed it again. Not even when very busy or skint. I know my dog has never needed her anal glands emptying since making the change to meat and bone feeding.

[skycat 6,174]

Too true. The stools need to be hard. Look at fox shit: hard little lumps bound together with the fur or feather of whatever they've been eating. It isn't enough to say that the stools are firm, don't lose their shape: they really need to be hard for the passing of them to empty the anal glands.

I used to have a problem with some of my line: never again since feeding entirely raw meat and bones.

[mattyg 1,862]

he is fed on a mainly barf diet ,chicken carcass/wings,minced beef and rabbit when i have a few going spare raw meaty bones occasionally. id say 20% of his diet is made up of good quality dry food if there is such a thing! think i'll just cut out the dry stuff and see where i go from there!

cheers, matt

[Guest Ditch_Shitter]

Chicken carcass/wings,minced beef and rabbit when i have a few going spare raw meaty bones occasionally.

 

 

I strongly suspect that's ye problem, mate. Chicken's soft. Rabbits are soft. MINCED meat is slurry. " Bones occasionally " And then, to all this - forgive me but - half arsed " BARF ", ye Still chucking some dry shit, just to make sure That turns to greased slurry inside him and comes out as ..... Well, we've all heard what it comes out as

 

My advice ~ and I'll likely go to my grave trying to imprint this on one more Dog keepers conciousness, for their Dogs sakes ~ is to Stop mincing the beef and rabbits. Stopping that won't help his bum, but it'll do his teeth and thus rest of him a power of good. K?

 

Then try to make up the Bulk of his diet in breast of lamb and maybe some necks thrown in too.

 

I don't constantly bang on about BoL for nothing. I've simply found the flesh / Bone / Fat ratio to be just about as near perfect we'll ever get from anything one can just chuck in a bowl.

 

Then the Type of bone is, again, perfect. Lambs ribs are 'soft', by comparison, and springy. Almost like nail clippings in composition and structure. Thus they Don't blunt teeth, as cow shin (Marrow) bones do. Nor do they ever shatter like those. A Dog can literally shear through sheep ribs with his premolars. Crushing them himself with his molars and then sending reasonable sized bits down to the acid bath.

 

Time it comes out the other end, it's a tight, hard, quite dry nugget. I've actually seen them explode on impact with the ground! But, by christ, it can make ye eyes water to watch it emerge! And That's what a Dogs body is designed, by nature, to do. Dropping rocks like that gives those glands the daily, gentle stretching they require to annoint that shit with the Dogs personal scent. Whole purpose of having them there.

 

So, yeppers; Please do sling the dry shit out. It's doing absolutely no good and hindering the situation to boot. But then ye really Must get out there and find that Dog some lamb. And, when ye find it, offer it as is. Chop a meal sized portion off and give ye Dog that to get on with. Mince it and ye'll have destroyed the whole point of the excersise and will be heading for yet more problems.

 

Try it for a few weeks and let us know how ye get on. Bit of luck, that white coat hasn't yet caused irreperable damage to ye poor Dogs bum. But just give the ignorant c*** time .....

[mattyg 1,862]

cheers ditch shitter,

i will sort some lamb and ditch the dry stuff and will report back in a few weeks. to be honest you're not the 1st to mention it. just thought it was a bit odd that i have 2 dogs and only 1 of em is suffering from my ignorance!

cheers, matt

Edited May 2, 2008 by mattyg

[skycat 6,174]

Just like some people can smoke 60 a day and never get lung cancer, so some dogs you could feed on the worst crap in the world and they wouldn't get anal gland problems. If a dog is prone to it then feeding crap will bring out the problem: 2 sisters from my line are a good example: they are the only dogs I have ever had to get it on a regular basis, but their mother and other relatives never ever had a problem no matter what they were fed. But like I said earlier, once on raw and nothing but raw: hey presto, end of problem.

One thing to watch out for it if you feed TOO MUCH bone and the dog starts getting too constipated and really struggling to pass chalk white golf balls, then adding minced raw veg: apple, greens, carrot, celery etc will sort that problem. The occasional handful of rolled oats can also help: this is all vegetable fibre which wild dogs would get from grass and prey animal shit eating.