Thats very interesting. And it solves a minor mystery for me.
I have a very skinny lab(dog) that eats ravenously and seemingly indescriminately. She is skinny and no there are no parasites present. Been tested for worms, etc. And thenn treated for it anyway even though tests came back negative.
She LOVES veggies, raw or cooked. She eats paper, wood, and plastic too! Sometimes metal and rocks. I’ve caught her grazing in the yard like a sheep! Not grass, she hates that. She likes the weeds only, tail wagging the whole time. And no, she doesn’t throw up after. She ate all my tulip and iris bulbs too..lily bulbs as well. And the rhubarb. I saved the peony roots from her, but only barely. She won’t eat ferns or fern roots/bulbs.
But when I give her celery she won’t eat it. If I give her left over soup with celery in it, she leaves the celery chunks laying on the floor and licks the bowl squeaky clean. She will eat celery LEAVES though. If I’m chopping celery for soup and I throw the leaves down for her, she likes those.
She also doesn’t like onions or cabbage. But she LOVES spinach and lettuce. LEAVES, that is. The “stemmy” and “stalky” parts of it she won’t eat. Only the fragile leafy parts.
This will sound bad...but your dog sounds like my son!!!! Tested for parasites, worms (missions trip to Peru) - kept losing weight - 6’2 and weighed 120 and dropping! But would eat and eat! Found out celiac! (gluten intolernace -wheat “allergy” for lack of easier explanation and space)
Dogs can be gluten/wheat intolerant too - and it will cause similar symptoms as in humans! It is the LAST thing doctors think of. Get your skinny dog off of what he is eating now, check your labels, and don’t give him anything with wheat or gluten!!! Give it about a month or two - you’ll see a difference.
When you are gluten intolerant, although you eat, the reaction from the wheat gluten causes the cillia in your intestines to die, so no matter what you eat, you can’t absorb the nutrients! They add gluten to dog food. Therefore you just get skinnier and skinnier. In infants, they used to call it failure to thrive! Your vet may not have thought about it or even know about it or even! Your dog is literally dying every time he eats.
She may have an unusual parasite that is not a typical worm and not prone to the usual treatments. But the answer to this is an atypical vermifuge: pumpkin.
Known since the 12th Century, it is unusual in that it does not kill the parasites, just knocks them out, immobilizes them, so needs to be followed with a canine laxative, to flush the still living parasites out.
You begin by making a mash of about a pumpkin’s worth of ground raw pumpkin seed and some pumpkin meat for bulk through a meat grinder.
Dogs (or pigs) with such parasites are often voracious eaters, so you don’t have to stint. It is very safe, and was even used as a safe way for pregnant women to expel parasites without risking their babies.
Some hours later, this is followed up with an oil based laxative, of mineral, Castor or olive oil.
My own experience with this was indirect, as I had a lab/husky mix who was alleged to have a weak stomach, and had a restrictive diet as a result. The dog, however, attacked and ate an entire ripe pumpkin, and half of a second one, right off the vine, and from that point had “a cast iron stomach”, and ate normally for the rest of his life. Even challenging food like Szechuan Chinese.