# Anal Gland Issues - Alternative Options



## Vhuynh2 (Feb 13, 2012)

Molly had had an anal sac issue since puppyhood. She expressed them on her own and the smell would just be awful. Most of the time, she was not expressing them normally (I think that's why it was so awful when she finally did) and had to get them manually expressed probably about once a month. Pumpkin did not do a thing. The vet said one of her sacs felt deeper set and may explain the difficulty in natural expression. However (and I know this option isn't feasible for everyone), when we switched to a completely raw diet, the issue went away. We had always fed some raw, but not completely. We stopped having to express them and now we rarely ever smell anything coming from her back end.

Maybe you can try giving a raw meaty bone more often, like every two days give a turkey neck with dinner. The necks are completely edible and is probably about 30% bone, which will really help harden those poops.


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## cgriffin (Nov 30, 2011)

I don't know how Ella is with fish - salmon. My dachshund had terrible anal gland issues till I started feeding him Taste of the Wild Pacific Stream dry formula - salmon based, grain free.


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## laprincessa (Mar 24, 2008)

Max has to have his anal glands expressed about every 6 months, our vet said to give him the shredded wheat and that's helped -before we started that, it was monthly. I would think that you would see a chance by now if it was helping, though. 

Don't feel guilty for not doing raw, I couldn't manage it either.


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## Susan: w/ Summit we climb (Jun 12, 2014)

The soluble fiber in cooked beans works for Summit. Some beans have twice the fiber of pumpkin. He doesn't need it anymore, though. He seems to have adapted to his food.

I'm sure that wheat bran would work, too.


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## ktkins7 (Jul 20, 2013)

Thanks everyone. After the suggestions on here and speaking with the techs at the vet's office I'm going to try a combination of things and go from there. One of the things they suggested at the vets was giving Ella some sweet potato. We'll see if she eats that.

The other thing I'm to do is add a little raw food to her diet. I got the Nature's Variety Instinct medallions in lamb. I had a choice locally between that and the Primal, but I thought it better to keep her with lamb because that's the protein in her Acana dry food. I think I'm going to start off giving two of the medallions each day and see how that does. Each one is 46kcal and her dry food is a little under 400kcal per cup. I want to get her closer to 45 pounds so I'll just reduce the dry a tad so she gets about 450kcal per day. Even though that hasn't been making a difference and she hasn't lost any weight since September with increased exercise. I'm going to worry about that later though. She does seem more lean recently and they thought she looked like she lost weight at the vets. I'm going to post in the nutritional area about how much to give her because the guidelines on their website make it look like raw calories might not be equal to the calories in the dry food. Their site says to lose weight she should be having 727kcal of the raw food per day, which is much more than I'm feeding her dry. Like I said, I'll start a new thread with it.

I'm also going to go back to giving her a raw bone or something like a raw turkey neck once a week.

Hopefully this isn't too much, but I'm just going to experiment and see. I'm open to further suggestions, even if it's how to add the bit of raw food to her diet.

Thanks again everyone.


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## laprincessa (Mar 24, 2008)

Max loves sweet potatoes. I've never thought of them as helping with the anal gland issues, thank you for that information.


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## elly (Nov 21, 2010)

Im sorry, I have only just read this.
Chester was the anal gland issue king.  We had to go religiously regularly to get them emptied out especially as he had so many tummy issues too. My regular vets changed hands and my favoured vet left and we had to temporarily find another whilst ours refitted and prepped a new practice. He was Spanish I think and suggested we put a spoon of oatbran in his meals. He said we won't look back if we do it..and we never have. We have never had to take him again and we now have Manny on the same regime too. Plain oatbran or toasted oatbran..any is fine, a spoonful on their dinner and their bottoms are as healthy as can be  So simple and so effective


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## ktkins7 (Jul 20, 2013)

Thanks everyone. After a little bit of playing with her food the last week or so, I've settled on giving Ella a half raw/half dry food diet. She gets Nature's Variety Instinct Raw Lamb in the morning and Acana Lamb Okanagan Apple at night. She gets some sweet potato with each meal. So far so good, but it is still a little too early to be sure. As a benefit, she absolutely loves meal time now. Before she would typically get to her food whenever she got to it. Now she eats as soon as I put it down, whether its the raw or the kibble. Don't know if it's the sweet potato or what. I am going to keep an eye on her weight though to make sure she doesn't start losing too much weight. She can stand to lose a few pounds, but I want to stop where she's at the lean and healthy point.

Last week she also had a raw turkey neck for the first time and she loved it. Trying to figure out other bones and stuff for her to gnaw on and help with her teeth. As of now she's had the turkey neck (it was a good sized one and took her a while to chew and eat, not a small one) and marrow bones. I haven't been able to find knuckle bones at the local butchers.

We'll see if these changes end up helping her anal glands. If these don't work I'll give the oat bran a try.

Thanks again!


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## Loisiana (Jul 29, 2009)

I buy the 10 pound bags of chicken quarters at the store and a couple of days a week all the dogs get one. Turkey necks are my favorite for keeping teeth clean. Pork necks and pork ribs are also good. I generally don't feed beef bones, they tend to be hard and I don't want any broken teeth.


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## Wonderdog (Mar 21, 2012)

Where to get Oat Bran?


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