Dog Anal Glands & How To Express Them With Food

Today's video stinks ... but (see what we did there?) you need to know how to take care of your dog anal gland problems.

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When I got my first dogs, I thought that squeezing out anal glands was part of my job. I’d squish out that disgusting smelling stuff any time my dog scooted on the carpet - and that was a lot. But I only had to make one simple change - and 25 years and a dozen dogs later, I’ve never had to touch another anal gland.

Anal glands are little sacs near his bum hole that contain oil and sweat glands - that’s what gives their contents that extra special skunky smell! In the wild, that smelly goo helps dogs mark their territory much better than urine marking. They can pinch some stuff off from the glands when they want to. If the contents in those sacs is liquid enough, your dog will do fine. But vets estimate that 12% of dogs develop anal gland issues at some point in their life. And that’s a lot.

Now your vet might tell you that diet has little to do with anal gland health - but it just isn’t true. In the wild, the dog’s high protein diet with natural calcium sources like bone give him a firmer, harder stool. Hard stools put pressure on the anal glands and helps express them as your dog goes poo. But dogs that eat kibble and processed foods have way runnier poops than they should. You’ve see them - your poop doesn’t look like that, it’s much firmer (or at least it should be! IF it’s not then you’re eating too much processed food too). This is haunted kibble makers for decades. They know that runny poops can cause anal gland impactions because they don’t exert pressure on them - so they add what’s called bulk to kibble, which is insoluble fiber that literally bulks up the stools. Insoluble means your dog can’t digest it so it’s really only there to firm up the stools - but the problem is, if they add too much, it can bind to minerals, which can harm the dogs eating it. Since I started feeding my dog a raw diet over 25 years ago, I’ve never had another anal gland issue. Mother Nature takes care of her animals and if you feed them what they’re supposed to eat, then the anal glands will function just fine.

The first thing you can do is give your dog a bone. When dogs gnaw on bones, the calcium and other minerals give the stool a lot of bulk and the poo is often hard and a bit hard for your dog to pinch out. This is what keeps the pipes of raw-fed dogs humming, so ask your butcher for a bone for your dog once a week or so and this will really help. HOWEVER, it shouldn’t be marrow bones - marrow is really fatty and could make your dog’s stools even runnier if he’s not used to it. So try to find flat bones like beef neck bones, beef ribs or hip bones to avoid a lot of marrow.

The second thing to do is to work on your dog’s allergies. A major cause of impacted anal glands is allergies and food sensitivities. This means working on your dog’s gut health with probiotics and, I hate to say it, a good raw diet works well because carbohydrates cause unwanted changes in the gut that can cause food sensitivities and leaky gut.

Third, you should really stop manually expressing the glands yourself - and ask your groomer to stop too because they’ll often just go ahead and do it. All of that repeated squeezing and pinching can irritate the sacs and cause inflammation - and now your dog will have a serious problem. Inflamed anal glands don’t drain well and you could be setting your dog up for chronic issues and even surgery to remove them because they’re just too inflamed and scarred to work.

Fourth, keep your do trim and slim. Dogs who are overweight are at a higher risk for anal gland problems. This could be because dogs that eat a lot of starch are more likely to be overweight and have metabolic diseases - but it could simply be your dog is too fat to reach around and lick her glands clean!

And, finally, you can try to add a bit more fiber to your dog’s diet. Add about 2 tablespoons psyllium husks to a cup of bone broth and mix them until it looks like a jelly. Give this to your dog apart from meals for a few days and it should help clean out the pipes.

So anal gland problems can be a pain in the butt for both you and your dog - but the don’t have to be. Feed the right foods that Mother Nature made for your dog to eat and you’ll do a great job of cleaning out the anal sacs without having to squeeze it out.

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