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Pumpkin

2482 Views 11 Replies 9 Participants Last post by  cshellenberger, 
Nargle
Basil has been having loose stools off and on since I adopted him about three weeks ago. I've read that canned pumpkin can help firm up stools, so I decided to go try it out. However, I couldn't find plain pumpkin ANYWHERE. I decided to get a can of pumpkin pie filling after reading the ingredients (they didn't look so bad, just pumpkin plus sugar and spices) since I was already there and I could do some research once I got home. I figured that if I found a reason why the pie filling is a bad idea, I can just make some pumpkin muffins for my boyfriend and I.

Well, I can't find any info on the subject, aside from just plain old DON'T use it. So.. what exactly is so bad about it? I don't intend on feeding him copious amounts of the stuff, just enough to keep him from having loose stools. And I assumed that the spices are probably what's bad (It didn't say exactly what spices were in there, just "spices.") since the sugar doesn't SEEM like it would be a problem. I mean, dogs eat sugary-sweet peanut butter quite regularly, don't they? And out of everyone I've ever met, only my mom buys natural un-sweetened peanut butter XD And if the sugar IS the problem, as in, it causes a weight problem or something, then I suppose we'll just have to go on a few extra walks! Lol!

So, would you suggest I make those muffins and continue my search for plain pumpkin? Or will the pie filling do for now?

Also, how much do you suppose I should feed to a 17 lb Papillon, if I'm only trying to firm up his stools?
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Kathyy
Make the muffins. Ginger and cinnamon are okay for dogs but I don't know about the others. The amount of sugar in peanut butter is nothing compared to the sugar in pumpkin pie! 27 grams carb in 1 ounce PPF, 2 grams carb in 1 ounce plain pumpkin and 6 grams carb in 1 ounce peanut butter. [I love nutritiondata.com!]

Start small. Mix a teensy bit into his food or have him lick it off the spoon. If he likes it and poop is still too soft then make the spoonful a bit bigger. No matter how wonderful a new food may be it still needs to be introduced slowly.

Sassy gets canned pumpkin as the vegetable part of her diet. 3 ounces, 6 tablespoons, a day for her 44 pounds. So your end dose might be 1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon a day. I put the pumpkin on a cookie sheet, spread it out and froze it. Then I broke it into chunks and bagged it up. Dogs loved the simple pupsicles and I didn't have to worry about spoiling.
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Kathyy
I have used sweet potato instead of pumpkin, been a while and don't remember what the end result was. Heeehee. Snort. Nutritiondata shows raw sweet potato and pumpkin having the same amount of fiber but there are the two kinds - soluble/insoluble. And sweet potato is much higher in calories, 24 per ounce versus 10 per ounce for pumpkin. And if you are looking in the canned foods all the sweet potato I have seen is canned with syrup. Not okay.

You could cook up any winter squash and use that instead. Butternut, acorn, turban, banana.
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