Anyone has had problems with Orijen? One of my teachers mentioned it being too rich, and a coworker has had a dig off of it because of urinary crystals.
I've started feeding Jessie the chicken formula over the summer (and coincidentally she started having some unusually high amount of ear "wax" and also yeastyness between her toes... The ear discharge was back to normal after a week or two into the new diet, but the yeastiness is slowly leaving now). I initially freaked out about the yeast but it's really not bothering her and my vets told me to leave it alone which seems like the only thing that works, tried vinegar, baking soda footbaths, etc. Her stools have never been so great than on this food - no mucus strings, no occasional soft serve, which is amazing.
She's also slowly lost 3 lbs (which on a thin dog like her brings her from normal-looking to lumbars peeking through) in the last month which is odd since she's been exercing less (the ridiculous rain-ice everywhere to frostbite temperature do not allow for that much outside time - she's quite content to curl up inside)... Normally, normal amount of food (1 3/4 cups a day for "chill" dog as indicated on bag, that's the same quantity that she had all summer when she wa smore active) + less exercise = fat...
I did a urinalysis on her in november (brought urine to school, then class blah-blah, analyzed about 2 hours after collection), she had LOADS of struvites, but my teacher told me that since her urine was so concentrated (1.050) to not worry too much and increase her water intake (I was puzzled at that one but I listened). I also did full bloodwork on her and everything was notmal except slightly elevated albumin. I'm now adding a good 1 1/2 - 2 cups of warm water to her food at each meal, and she's peeing like a water fountain.
Last Tuesday, I brought urine in at work (it takes me 1 hour to get there, and I had to do some x-rays before analyzing it too) and she had less but still quite a few struvites, urinary ph 7, density 1.050, protein 1+ on the stick. I was like, f*ck, and brought her to work on Friday to get her x-rayed for stones and get urine by cysto. No crystals there, so we assumed that the ones that I saw were from the urine standing for too long... but she does have a ph that can favor crystal formation. We sent the sample to the lab for bacterial culture, we'll see what we get. The x-ray developer was being an arse so I'll get her results on Monday.
I also freaked out seeing that she was losing some protein in her urine + she has been losing weight, but apparently the protein could be due to urinary tract inflammation, if she has a UTI (she has been licking her privates quite a bit).
I'm just not liking all these little things, since this all happened since she has been on Orijen. I've recently started switching her onto the fish version (to try and get rid of the yeast, if it is caused by some food intolerance)... I'm not keen on switching her onto anything else since it seems to be the only food so far that's she's digesting properly. Bah.
Sorry for the long, boring, slightly medically detailed rant.