Hoping for some help.
My 1 year old Boxer / Staffie / Mastiff cross, has had very persistant ear infections, and has had surgery 3 times on her ears. On each occasion the infections have been caused by a fungus. I have been reading a lot online (mostly American research) about the benefits of a yeast free diet for dogs with this problem. She presently has the Wainwrights wet and dry food, I can't see anything about yeast in the ingredients but just wanted some advice.

thanks
Bronwen

Do you drink or make bread?

sugars feed yeast.

Carbohydrates are sugars.

So in order to prevent yeast overgrowths I would recommend:

Feeding a diet devoid of grains, cereals at the very least and potato if you can help it.

Give probiotics daily (HEalthspan do a good one, 5 bacteria, 20billion of them and does not need refrigeration)

Live yoghurt does not have so many different ones or amount and rarely survives the journey through the stomach.

So you could feed

Applaws
JWB cereal free
Orijen

Although these contain potato this is usually not as bad as feeding grains.

Hi,
Thanks for all your help, I had only heard of JWB so will have to look the others up. Do you know if they do both wet and dry food, because she really loves wet food.
Thanks
Bronwen

Talking of wet foods, I feed Naturediet and have just had a look at some of the fact sheets on their website.
I found this, quite a bit of info and you will see on the second page they state that their "sensitive" variety is suitable.
http://www.naturediet.co.uk/Factfile...0Infection.pdf

__________________

"Life is mostly froth and bubble, Two things stand like stone,
Kindness in another’s trouble, Courage in your own”

Some links to go through:

The Wet Dog Food Index

The Dry Dog Food Index

Although it would require additional research I would also look at Raw Feeding: everything you need to know! if you need to cut carbohydrates out of your dogs diet. Dogs simply do not need carbohydrates.

Another important thing not mentioned by people so far is to remember treats can also have an impact and should be shown the same consideration as normal food.

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Is she picking up the infection from somewhere within the house/garden where she sleeps? (Bedding/lawn? - isolate and remove this infection reservoir)

Does the shape (floppiness) of her ears mean that they are susceptible to retaining moisture and thus being a ideal growth medium for such yeast/mould infections to develop? Have a doggie towel to hand when returning from walks and clean each ear, use with some common sense and an eye to cross contamination from one ear to the other.

I understand that this is a particular Spaniel problem to the point that specialist bowls are made to keep ears out of the food/water.



I know that with ears there needs to be a balance of some ear wax and not over cleaned, cotton buds that seem to carry warnings that they are not to be used within the ear (WTF are they for then?) to be used sparingly.

You might ask your vet if weekly gentle cleaning and small smear of an anti-fungal cream like Canesten would prevent re-infection (the OTC human product is dog safe, although there is a animal version sold as well). People do tend to over dose creams in these situations, if the ear is clean the cream really needs to be smallest amount, a dab the size of a pea between both ears is probably more than enough.

We use very dilute iodine solution for ears with cotton buds, one stick for each ear, no problems in five years.