Shiro was born on Nov 18, 2016 in Oklahoma. I purchased her in City Pup Chelsea in New York City. I know it's not a good idea to buy a dog in a puppy store, but I just couldn't forget Shiro when I first saw her through the shop's window.
You would never know how difficult the first time to take care of a frenchie puppy. Unlike other mixed breeds, french bulldog was born with a very weak immune system. Shiro caught a running nose before she got neutered when she was 3 months, which delayed our pick-up date about 2 weeks. This is just a beginning, I remembered we took her to see the vet once a month because of diarrhea, vomiting, urinating blood, ear infections, bumps on the belly etc.
I'm not complaining my little Shiro, I'm here to share my experience with all frenchie parents to help improve your dogs' health! All pets deserve the best caring. ❤️
1. Diarrhea
Long-time diarrhea is very dangerous to dogs. A common reason for diarrhea is food allergies. I strongly recommend dog owners to do an allergy test for your lovely dogs, which helps to get the right food and avoid other problems like sneezing and hair dropping.
The other reason for dog's diarrhea is giardia. When Shiro was 6 months, her diarrhea lasted about 4 weeks. We took her to the vet, he tested her poop and found a medium level giardia, which might infect from dog parks, grasses, and water.
🤪Yuchen's tip: When diarrhea happens to your dogs, check if you feed them with the right food, treats or supplements. If you can exclude the problems of ingestions and your dog's diarrhea is getting worse, please do not hesitate to make a doctor appointment.
2. Hair Dropping
In February 2018, I spotted two symmetric red irritated skin on each side of Shiro's body and the skin looked pretty dry.
I assumed thress possible reasons and begin our fight with the situation:
fungal and bacterial infection (symmetric);
food allergy
Lack of nutrition
Shiro was on antibacterials for two weeks but there was no improvement. The vet suggested giving her a biopsy to see if there're skin diseases and we did it. Luckily, the results showed her skin is healthy.
In the meanwhile, Shiro has diarrhea very often and the vet said it's possibly caused by the food allergy. In April 2018, I finally decided to do an allergy test for Shiro because her skin and diarrhea are getting worse.
This picture was shot on April 4 when she was given a blood test. A week after, I got the results. I couldn't believe that she is allergic to almost every regular proteins for dogs including chicken, beef, fish, milk, soy even cotton and dust. Poor girl. That's was too bad because I fed her with chicken and goat milk for more than one year.
I decided to replace her protein with duck, so I searched online and found the best choice for her, Acana Duck and Pear dry food which has a very plain recipe. Shiro was on wet food too, but I don't think the canned food is good for dogs; they're cheap, no real meat and with strong artificial flavors.
It's not enough to feed Shiro dry food only. After a careful consideration and research, I tried to do homemade food for my Shiro, see Yuchen's secret recipe in this blog. Thanks to Dr. Allan Nguyen's suggestion I began to feed Shiro some flaxseed oil and melatonin, and also applied some oil on her dry skin. Shiro's hair went back very quickly and her coat is pretty thick and shiny now.
🤪Yuchen's tip and conclusion: French bulldog has a very sensitive stomach and skin, dog parents should pay more attention to their foods and surroundings. I remember I asked the vet if Shiro's skin was caused by the lack of nutrition, and I got the answer 'no'. However, I think it should be a reason because after feeding her with the homemade food, the hair got recovered very quickly. So, If your dog drops more hair but hard to find a reason, please try different safe ways to get it fixed.
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