Losing Weight, Need Suggestions

Up his food a little more?

I really don;t know, it did work with Sam thou.....give Bev some lovin's for me!

You can increase his calories by 30% with homecooked foods, without messing things up.  What I'd suggest is doing about half sweet potato, baked, and half ground turkey - you should be able to find the 15% fat pretty easily this time of year and as a bonus, it's cheap - don't do the "lean" variety.  I'd do this because if you simply add more kibble, it will be less concentrated calories - the simple carbs and fat will go straight to helping him gain weight.

If you want me to help you make sure it's within the limits of what the vet told you to do (the protein and the calories with the food), just PM me and we'll work it out together. 

Amanda, I'd recheck the thyroid and liver. Thats quite a lot of food for this amount of weight loss espeically given his restricted activity.  I'm not saying anything is wrong but certainly not unreasonable to recheck. I've found that the Prednisone can quickly effect things, one minute Willow's liver was fine, the next she needed meds for that too. 

 Also, I was expecting a big weight gain when she started and instead she had a loss of about 4-6 lbs.  It wasn't until we started weaning her off that she started to gain.  And, I'm thinking, it's possible that because Bevo isn't on huge doses of Prednisone this may be exactly what's going on.  I'd be curious to see what your vet would say about this too.

Good luck with getting to the bottom of this. 

Lori

Oh Bevo, you need to keep your strength up, whatcha doing boy?

Sorry, wish I had any advice for you. Give him lots of kisses from us and know that we're sending good vibes your way!!

Becca, thank you.  I'll be pm'ing you with questions from time to time.

Lori, his thyroid & liver levels were re-checked Monday (11-24) and were within normal ranges.  His pred dose is being decreased, but he is still on a pretty good size dose right now.  He's down to 20mg twice a day.  His weight loss has been gradual, & the vets have been monitoring it.  They aren't really sure why he loses weight on pred, instead of gaining.  They were already running blood panels frequently, but decided to re-check his thyroid to see if his levels were high.  They weren't, so a food increase was recommended, which we have done.  He is back to normal exercise, but I am working him back up very slowly because he can't really afford to lose any more weight.

Oh, OK, he's on a lot more Prednisone than I thought.  Yes, Willow had a lot of trouble keeping weight on at her initial doses which started at 80mg.  She was eating over double what she normally did and not exercising much at all (she really couldn't) and still not gaining.  But, when we started to wean off, that's when she shot up to 50 lbs.  So, I think you might see some gain when you reduce the dose--right now he's still getting a pretty good dose for his current weight. 

Amanda, pred will **seriously** screw up thyroid levels -- it can both make the thyroid *appear* high OR low. 

That's why in my initial post about this I told you to have the panel sent to Michigan State -- we went thru this in a big way when Billy was being treated for the IMHA (and was on pred for almost a year)-- and the Michigan State vets spent a TON of time on the phone with my vet (my *regular* vet by the way) -- Michigan State did a big study on the affects of pred on thyroid about 3 years ago which is why they were so knowledgeable about it. 

We had Billy on WAY higher doses of thyroid supplementation while he was being treated for the IMHA -- doses which have now been brought back down to where they were at first.  But it can make the thyroid appearl either high OR low for some reason.

Callie, our vet insists on sending blood to Michigan State.  We normally check his thyroid levels every 3 months, because when we first started supplementation, he was difficult to manage.  Michigan State has six different thyroid tests on file for him.  All of his results have stayed very close to the same throughout this time.  They did not feel like this was a thyroid problem.  They were concerned with a pancreatic deficiency, so we ran the TLI & PLI to rule that out. 

Usually, when his thyroid levels are off low, he loses patches of hair.  When they are too high, his skin/coat get veryly greasy.  Right now, his skin/coat are pretty much perfect except for the shaved areas, which are growing back in nicely.

 Is he getting digestive enzymes? Emma looks like a skeleton with skin stretched over it, without them. I buy a different high quality supplement every time I buy them, and I feed her double what the label says. Prozyme, Dogzymes, stuff like that. I know it's crazy sounding, but that's the one thing that consistently keeps weight on her (and she has liver troubles, which Bevo isn't showing, but maybe he's compromised a little and isn't doing what he needs to do...).

He gets prozyme.  I've been looking at Show Stopper, but haven't bought it yet. 

 I like Show Stopper, for Ena B. It helped with her skin and coat, a lot, and it added a really good source of fat. 

Poor Bevo. I hope you find something that helps him out. Almost 6000 calories a day is so crazy, even for a big, active Doberboy. At least he likes to eat, right? 

Oh yeah.  He loves to eat.  Next to trying to drive me crazy, it is probably his favorite thing in the world to do!

Hey srry to hear about your dog. I sorta went through the same but it wasnt medicine induced. My Ruger after having his operation lost some serious weight. He is normally around 112, he drop down to 84. I was concerned so I talked to my vet and he said try some homecook meals. I looked online for recipes and came up with Fatty Balls, Basically meatballs with peanut butter/olive oil/sweet potato ect. ect. everything that would put weight on your boy, I had him on that and his kibble and saw immediate results, after the 1st week he look fuller. Im hoping he will be back at his normal weight in the upcoming weeks.

 The only thing I can think of that wasn't mentioned that would cause weight loss is cancer, but I assume evidence of it would be seen in the blood tests he's had. I hope Becca's idea works; sending lots of healing thoughts.