Severely growth stunted puppy - need highest calorie food - no appetite

Hi food group, I could use some advice. This is for a non-doodle but I know y'all are the experts on this kind of thing! I have 2 doodles that eat well - the are on canidae als. This puppy I acquired came to me severely undernourished and at about a fourth of the weight it should have been - poor coat still and no appetite. She's also had diarrhea off and on, sometimes explosive.

She's had stool looked at 3x by vet, never any worms or coccidea spotted. We just sent a sample off to the vet school lab to check for giardia.

She managed to refuse most food the first couple weeks I had her (weeks 10-12) and I did get her to eat by mixing orijen puppy kibble with the canidae als and hot water and topping with the chicken natures variety raw patties. She did eat about 60-75% of each bowl but her diarrhea got worse. Oh but she did almost QUADRUPLE her weight in about 6 weeks! She is no longer all bones but yesterday the vet said she's still too small and very little muscle for her bone structure.

She's had two short courses of panacur and metronidazole in case we were missing something in her stools and of course she firmed up temporarily while on the metro.

The vets advice is to find the highest calorie kibble she'll eat and stick with that only. He thinks she just has a damaged/immature digestive tract and it will improve with time and consistency.

She was also eating stools (hers and the big dogs! UGH!!!) and any mushrooms she could sniff out. Now that she's less starved looking the pica/copraphagia has diminished thankfully.

So what do you guys recommend? She hated the orijen puppy strangely enough. She'll eat a dozen pieces of kibble a meal but the vet said she ought to eat 3-4 cups per day of the canidae als going by the kcal! She's 19 pounds and probably should be about 40. She's 4 months old.

I'm willing to use any food on the list but if anyone has experience in this area I'd love to hear it. Thanks!

Eta that she checked out healthy otherwise at the vet and has boundless puppy energy.

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Permalink Reply by Melissa on February 1, 2017 at 9:07am

Thanks. We sound like we're dealing with similar situations. I will look into all the things you've tried. My girl also has a hard time eating hard kibble. But she's not crazy about soaked. She'd inhale the Nature's Variety raw but I can't afford for that to be her sole diet, and I kind of think that might have been contributing to her diarrhea. I offered her some canned i/d that I found in the pantry and she turned her nose up at it. And I know Orijen is supposed to be the best but I swear it always gives my dogs diarrhea too.

I haven't tried adding pumpkin or anything like that. That's a thought as well.

Permalink Reply by Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle on February 1, 2017 at 9:34am