My Dog Has Cushings

Herbie, our Petit Basset Griffon Vendeen (PBGV) has Cushings and the way we discovered that Herbie was ill completely took our breath away! Our other PBGV, Sprockett (he's 7), alerted us to Herbie's cushing's disease.

He was diagnosed with this in July but not showing any signs at all beforehand of being poorly. However for a few days Sprockett was continually trying to mount him. It was very strange as he'd never done this before and it was very intense - he even cried to get to Herbie when we separated them.

I called our vet who said to bring Herbie in as they had heard of this kind of behaviour before (but never had a case) when two dogs have grown up together and one senses that the other is sick.

Long story short, a few days later Herbie was diagnosed with Cushing's disease. Even more interesting though, the behaviour from Sprockett stopped completely after our second visit to the vet with Herbie, before he was put on any medication and in fact before he was fully diagnosed. It was almost as if Sprockett knew we were on the case so he could relax.

Herbie also has diabetes, so we asked Suzi if there was anything dietary we could do to help. She suggested we change him onto raw food with PET Plus, as that combination would provide all the enzymes, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, prebiotics, probiotics and other micronutrients in a whole food, living form, undamaged by cooking or chemical processing.

This would provide the body with the nutrients it needs to start the healing process. It would also stop loading the body with toxins (anything that has been cooked or chemically processed is damaged and treated by the body as a toxin) which it would have to detoxify and excrete.

In addition, Herbie was having to produce all the enzymes needed to digest, absorb and use the top quality processed food we were giving him because it was completely devoid of enzymes. This had exhausted his enzyme producing capacity (contributing to the diabetes) and stressed his body (contributing to the Cushings).

So, we put all our dogs onto raw food (Natural Instinct) and PET Plus. Herbie has put a little bit of weight on and is certainly a lot happier.

I had one further question. I had read that diabetic dogs should have some form of slow release carbohydrate in their diet so if that were correct, what should we use as a carbohydrate for him?

And the answer; the liquidised veg is slow release carbohydrate and that's in Natural Instinct's food. You could add more liquidised greens. That'd be great! Aim for about half and half meat and bone mince to liquidised greens. As there's already veg in the food you're using, just add about a third of the volume of liquidised greens.

And the result! Herbie is now a healthy 20 kg - yippee! His blood results are getting better every time too. Thank you very much for all your advice, I really appreciate it.