Hello!
I adopted a new dog a month ago. She was 5-1/2 months old when I got her. She was in a shelter, then a prison training program from the time she was a couple weeks old until I adopted her. They claim to have not known that she had a loose stool problem. After finding out she did, the officer in charge of the prison dog program questioned the prisoners that worked with the other 3 dogs in her litter, and found out all 4 dogs had the same issue, and the one that had not been adopted yet has ongoing loose stool just like the one I adopted.
Her stool usually starts to come out normal for a couple inches, then gets softer, till it ends up a soft, pudding like consistency. She strains and strains. Twice I have noticed a little mucus with some bright blood, but that's not normal.
My vet did a rectal probe thing to get stool the day I got her (a Friday). That test was negative. I called on Monday to report that she had loose stools, and they had me come in to get Flagyl. That didn't help at all. Next step was I brought her out to the vet first thing in the morning the day I brought her in to get her stitches out from her spay and got a fresh from the dog sample, and it showed campylobactor and giardia. She was put on 5 days of Panacur, and 10 days of Tylan. for two days she had normal stool, then it started up again. She just finished the 10 days of Tylan on Friday.
She's shiny, and has put on 7 pounds since I got her. She was lethargic when I got her - they thought she was "laid back" but I think she didn't feel well. They were feeding what ever was donated, usually Dad's dry regular. I have her on Wellness Super 5 Puppy, and a couple Milk Bones. I am also giving her some Probiotics since she won't eat yogurt. It is a strong one, from the health food store, meant for people - has a lot of different probiotics in it.
She has not had any accidents in the house, but I know this sort of stool is NOT normal. I took her back to the shelter I got her at yesterday, as they had forgotten to put her microchip in. I talked to the shelter manager. She was very upset about the loose stool issues. She said my bringing it up to her led her to investigate, and she found that "it's a real problem out there at the prison!" and she wants to know what we figure out with Josie so she can try to help the dogs they have in the prison program too.
The next plan my vets have is to have me bring her back on Wednesday for another fresh stool check. If it's negative for giardia and campylobactor, they want to send a sample in for an expensive ($150) test. I believe, and I may be wrong on this, that they were thinking it may be trichnomosis(sp?) -- T something..... anyway, they think being in a shelter situation, and the place the shelter took her from as a baby puppy was a hoarder... she may have some off the wall hard to find or hard to diagnos parasite or bacteria etc...
We have not tried pumpkin, etc because it would just be a band-aid to the underlying issue. Yesterday I had to take her for several hours in the car (the shelter is quite a ways from my home) and I gave her half an Imodium at midnight the night before and half yesterday morning and she was fine all day - she also gets carsick, so she wasn't fed till we got back. She didn't poo all day. This morning, we are back to the pudding again.
PalmBob, what I want to know is does this sound like a reasonable next step? $150 for a fecal test sounds like a lot to me. I've been going to the same vet for 35 years, but he is recovering from cancer and has taken on another vet now, and she's the one working with me on this. I like her really well, but have not been to her enough to know just how good she really is.
We have also talked about it being from stress, but all of us think that I have had her a month, and her life with us should be way less stress than her previous life. We live in the country, it is my elderly Mom and I. We have a 12 year old laid back Aussie, and a house cat. She should be living in dog heaven compared to where she has been.
We have pretty much skirted around the food allergy issue because all the pups in the litter had it - and now I have found out more dogs at the prison have it. However, Dr. Ann said if we don't get anywhere soon, she wants to change her over to a diet that would be for food allergy and see what we get. They gave me a case of cans of Royal Canin Intestinal diet to mix in her puppy food half an half for now. Helps that the Royal Canin representative was there when I took her in the last time! :-)
Thanks so much!
Jules and Josie
This message was edited May 17, 2009 10:43 AM
