Does This Sound Familiar?

[Guest Stripeyfan]

Hi, I'm new to posting on here although I've been browsing for a while, seems like a greyt place for advice so I'm hoping I can get some...

 

4 weeks ago, our Grey, Kelly, had what we thought was a stomach upset (he's a bit of a dustbin) - bad belly ache, then just as we were about to take him to the vet he was sick once and after that seemed ok. No diarrhoea. We starved him that night, light food the next day and started reintroducing his normal food after that. 2 days later he started getting MAJOR diarrhoea which wouldn't clear up - there was mucus in it etc and he got very depressed. So we took him to the vet who prescribed metronidazole for 6 days and said to keep him on chicken and rice. This did the trick so when he'd finished the ABs we started gradually reintroducing his kibble again... which trigged ANOTHER attack (though not as bad), so back to the vet. By now she and we suspected it might be a food intolerance (his kibble was 30% wheat), so said to keep him on chicken and rice for a few more days and then begin introducing a hypoallergenic kibble over 10-14 days (Burns chicken and rice). But we haven't got to that stage yet as he just doesn't seem to be firming up. He's now on Pro-Kolin in case the latest diarrhoea is down to the ABs knocking out his gut flora, and we're going back to the vet tomorrow for a follow up and to take in a 3-day stool sample for testing.

 

His appetite has been fine throughout - even the day this all started when he was clearly in pain - eating like a pig and VERY interested in whatever we're eating too. Since he finished the ABs his energy levels have been pretty normal and he's as keen to go for his walks as ever. He's lost a bit of weight although the vet isn't worried (could this be because the chicken/rice diet is lower fat than his kibble?). Since starting the Pro-Kolin he's had quite a bit of gas, and although he's not been needing to go out in the night it only seems to have got him to porridge consistency and no better. He also gets a gurgly tum, esp. when hungry, but there's been no more vomiting since that one time right at the start... basically we are completely confused as to what could be causing all this! So I was wondering if anyone had experience of anything similar, or if there's anything I should think to mention to the vet tomorrow (visit no. 5... fingers crossed we won't have to go again before then!). Any advice would be sooooooo greytfully received as we are DESPERATE to get our beautiful boy well again, we have been worried sick about him. Thanks!

[Guest Greytluv]

It seems you're doing everything right. I'm bumping this up so other ppl will see it.

 

I hope your boy feels better

[Remolacha]

Yes, sounds like you are going to need a new food. It's probably taking longer this time to firm him up because his system is now sensitive after all the upset.

 

Hope he starts to feel better soon!

[Guest SoulsMom]

I went through this with Soul except he had GI bleeding in addition to the big D and had to be hospitalized. Vet put him on Flagyl and Hills I/D prescription diet. I tried several times to get him back on his regular kibble, but each time he would start bleeding again. Have you thought about trying one of the prescription diets to at least give his system a rest and firm him up before exploring other kibble options?

[greyhoundgang]

What a loving, caring family this hound has found. Congrats on loving a greyhound!

 

re your inquiry - Classic food allergy.

 

Easy to fix, as long as IBD hasn't taken over.

 

Need to give close to grain free food.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Raw feeding is the best thing you can do for him. It will clear up all issues, and help him have a strong immune system and lovely coat, and good energy - and firm poops. NaturallyGrey at yahoogroups are all greyhound lovers who feed raw, and they are all helpful.

 

 

You can also try a kibble that doesn't have grains in it - Orijens is a very good one. Innova Evo is another i'm aware of. there are many more on the market now. The first ingredients on a label should be proteins.

 

ots of info at Greyhound Gang- click on LEARN, MEDICAL, FOOD. I've found holistic vetss best able to guide you through this. American Holistic Vet Medical Associationhas a list of them around the country.

 

Slippery Elm Paste is one of the best things you can have on hand to help when big D strikes. It soothes and helps heal the intestinal tract. Details on Gang site under Medical - Diarrhea. Basically you buy slippery elm capsules. Open about 5 - 7 capsules, put herb in boiling water, stir until a gel is formed. syringe some into hound's mouth, or put on food. give up to 4 times daily, depending on severity, and it will totally help.

 

sorry for format on this note - haven't figured out how to get all the header stuff out of the middle of the writing space.

 

claudia & Greyhound Gang

www.greyhoundgang.org

 

oh - best web site about food and dogs - Dogaware

[Guest SoulsMom]

While grain free is good, that is what Soul was on when he got so sick(because Soul also has Discoid Lupus). I've tried to put him back on a grain free food and each time he went back to bloody big D. So, even though I hate the contents, he's on all I/D all the time. Anything else is kept to a minimum. I guess I'm just saying that nothing is emperical. What works for one dog won't for another, etc.

[greyhead]

A 3-day stool sample sounds to me like they're looking for blood and maybe fat content. As long as you're taking samples, you might consider bacterial testing of one also. He could have a SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. You may have to request this type of testing, however. (I had to ask three times before it was done because everybody was preoccupied with the idea of worms.)

 

There are a lot of things that your pup could have. Our Spencer, for instance, had intestinal malabsorption, SIBO, and finally IBD. I could go on forever about that but it might not even be relevant!

 

You're doing a great job of jumping on this problem! Let us know how things go. People here really do care.

[greyhoundgang]

You are so totally right about every dog being an individual, and what works for one, doesn't always work for another. I start off all my talks that way (fyi - i'll be at GIG this year doing Why Does my Hound do THAT?? talk. And of course at Greyhound Gathering - Kanab) and usually remember to write that all the time - except i forgot in my last post.

 

 

When i was just kibble feeding, i would put allergy dogs on a Fish and Potato and in most cases that cleared things up. (with the holistic intestinal tract stuff too) After raw feeding for the past 7 years or so, I've found raw feeding to really clear up many issues - allergies: both skin and food, teeth/gum issues, coat, immune systems come right to mind.

 

claudia & Greyhound Gang

[Guest SoulsMom]

I would so love to get Soul on a raw diet (and I'm a vegetarian!) But I tried once and he's afraid of it. Seriously

Edited February 2, 2010 by SoulsMom

[rascalsmom]

Not the same thing, exactly, but our newest pup, Jack, had a similar problem. Transitioned from "farm food" to our food, and the poos became super soft. Not diarrhea, but really soft. Tried different food, chicken and potatoes, etc, and nothing helped.

 

Finally we put him on Iams Low Residue (prescription food), and he is now eating that exclusively and has FIRM POO. Like SoulsMom, I am not crazy about the ingredients of this food, but it works for Jack.

[Guest sweetpea]

Sweetpea and I took 9 months to find a kibble that agreed with her tummy.

 

We always started at a chicken and rice baseline, got her good and firmed up, and worked from there.

 

We tried just about every kind of dog food out there. Canned, kibble, snooty expensive brands, and regular old

run of the mill brands. What I figured out, for Sweetpea, if the food made her gassy, it was eventually going

to progress to the bloody pudding poo. (We've been on Solid Gold Hundenflocken for almost 2 years now, but your

results and mileage may vary.)

 

It might be a long process, but if your vet rules out any other cause, you might have to trial-and-error it until you

find a food that agrees with Kelly.

 

And you know what, she still gets the occasional gurgly tummy episode, maybe once a quarter. For that I give her Pepto Bismol or Mylanta

soaked into a piece of bread, and she's good to go.

 

Good luck!

 

 

Buzzy and the lovely and I-was-NEVER-gassy Sweetpea

[Guest Stripeyfan]

Thankyou for all the replies. It's good to be able to talk to people who understand, we've been feeling pretty alone with all this. We've only had Kelly 2 months AND he's our first dog so I feel terrible about all this happening to him so soon. Am going to ask the vet about food again tomorrow so I'll mention the prescription diets if they don't, and hopefully they are going to test for bacteria (as well as fats/blood/parasites) as that was one of the things they said they'd look into last week if he hadn't improved. Don't care what it costs as long as we get our beautiful boy back to full health again! We're just praying it is a GI thing and not anything more sinister, as his appetite is still so good and the weight loss not too drastic.

 

One other thing I've noticed (forgot to put it in the earlier post) is that he is nibbling around the backs of his thighs/back legs quite a lot and sometimes around his tail, as if something's irritating him... could this be a sign that he has parasites? The vet's almost certain his symptoms aren't because of a parasite but he was behind on his wormers when we got him, and even though I dosed him pretty much straight away, I only gave him one dose, so it just makes me wonder...

 

 

Thanks again, will update soon

 

P.S. Message from Kelly to Sweetpea - it's better out than in!

[greyhoundgang]

Ok - i'm going to give a pretty strong opinion here.

 

Do find a holistic vet to help with the food/diarrhea issues. I've seen, way too many times, well meaning vets run all kinds of tests, give hounds all kinds of medicine, and it just messes up their insides even more.

 

 

 

Between the stress of the tests, the constant diarrhea, and the contents of the medications - it will be too much and not needed. Again, these are my strong opinions based on dealing with hundreds of hounds that have passed thru Greyhound Gang's doors.

 

Getting a second opinion from a holistic vetwill save you time, money, heartache - both yours and the hounds.

 

You mention the biting - that is classic allergy issues (if you've ruled out fleas - look for little black debris at base of tail). Many vets will recommend prednisone. This, again from my experiences, only adds to the problem. Holistic vets have tools to fix this problem at the source.

 

This in no way is to denigrate vets. I have many vet friends. Everyone has their knowledge base, and most people are out to help. My experiences have shown that a holistic , more natural, method is best able to help with food allergies.

 

claudia & Greyhound Gang

[Guest SoulsMom]

The nibbling sounds like a food allergy . . .

 

Soul is the same as Sweetpea--if he started getting stinky gassy, I knew the bloody pudding poo wasn't far behind. If I keep him on the all I/D, no stinky farts and bouncy poop.

[Guest Stripeyfan]

Have been back to the vet... they're pleased with Kelly's overall progress - he seems to have put on 1/2 a pound or so - and are sending off the stool sample for bacteria and parasite tests, should get the results Friday. In the meantime we're to keep him on his bland diet and see how he goes from here. Thinking of switching his protein from chicken to fish as I've heard it's sometimes chicken that can cause problems...? He didn't seem to be firming up much on the chicken this last time and I'm concerned it might be a factor.

 

However the vet said something else which has got me thinking - well worrying actually. I apologise in advance for this question as it's REALLY trivial in comparison to what some of you are going through but she said something about stress sometimes being a factor in symptoms like this, and now I'm wondering, did she mean stress as in adjusting to a totally new lifestyle (which I guess is to a point unavoidable), or did she mean that we're doing something to stress our boy out?? We try to keep to a pretty strict routine as we were told this helps ex-racers adjust better - he gets up about 6.45 and is let out/fed, walked between 8 and 9.30 depending on whether I'm working that day, then if we're both at work DH always comes home about 11 to let him out/play etc. Although our working hours vary throughout the week he's never left for more than about 2.5 - 3 hrs. Then he gets another walk between 2 - 3pm and fed again about 5. The walks are basically the same ones every day during the week - round the village first thing and through some local woods in the afternoon - but we vary the route to keep him interested, and he always wants to go. When we're home we make sure we talk to him, cuddle lots and play, though if he wants his own space we respect that, and at weekends we take him out for more interesting walks in the countryside. Apart from recently when he's had the big D he settles fine at night and is always waggy and pleased to see us when we come in - though not frantic, and he's shown no signs of SA, he's really laid-back and tolerant. And although at present we haven't been able to find anywhere to let him off-lead while we're out we have a fenced yard he can play in. And we've got a very calm household - no kids and no screaming rows!! I'd've thought if he was stressed he'd be destructive/anxious/messing in the house but could there be something we're missing/not doing right? We're so desperate to get everything right for Kelly and give him a fantastic life so we'd hate to think we were messing up due to ignorance/inexperience.

 

Hope it's ok to ask more questions in the same post, thanks for listening!

[Remolacha]

Sounds like he has a great life! I doubt the vet meant you were stressing him, probably that the recurring bouts of GI issues were causing his system stress.

 

When they are new to homelife, that can cause loose poop, she could have meant that as well.

 

 

[Time4ANap]

We just went through this with Rocket. We had several weeks of bland meals, 2 different meds, and lots of soft and liquid poo along the way. All of the stool, blood, and urine tests came back negative, so we changed him from a lamb and rice based food to a grain-free food - Taste of the Wild High Prairie. In just a few days, he had normal poops again, and was putting a little weight back on. I noticed today that his coat is getting softer, so I think the food is working well for him.

 

The thing that was so frustrating about this is that shortly after we started the bland diet, he was back to his old self except for the liquid poop. So here's a dog that you know has something wrong, acting normal with all of the test results coming back normal. The only thing we could do is stop all treats for a bit in case they caused the stomach upset, and work our way into a new food. BINGO! We also had lots of help from the folks here on GT!

 

We used boiled ground beef instead of chicken as his bland food, but other than that we pretty much went through the same thing.

 

Hope your pup is better soon. It sounds like you are doing everything you can until you work into a new food.

[Guest SoulsMom]

I wouldn't worry too much about what the vet said . . . it's kind of a 'catch-all' phrase when they're not quite sure what is triggering the problem. She was probably referring to stress colitis, which was also mentioned to me about Soul's condition.

 

I still don't know what caused Soul's bloody stools. All I know is that every time I tried to take him slowly over to a kibble other than the I/D we'd get about a month into it and the bloody stools would start happening again. Even when Soul was shooting almost pure blood out his rear like a garden hose, he didn't seem the least bit stressed

 

ETA: Soul has Discoid Lupus, so we think it went slightly systemic and caused him to develop IBD. Not confirmed because that would involve scoping him and my vet and I don't see the need for such an invasive procedure as long as he's doing well on the I/D

Edited February 3, 2010 by SoulsMom

[Guest longdoglady]

Kelly certainly does not sound stressed to me! You are not doing anything wrong, greyhounds can have sensitive digestive tracts and you are doing your best to find the answer.

It is most likely a food issue but your vet will hopefully rule out other causes. Changing to fish instead of chicken is worth a try, if that does not work leave out the rice for a day to see if that is the problem. One day on meat alone will not hurt him. Burns do a venison and rice food which you could try if and when you go back onto dried food. I use half Burns high energy lamb and half Naturediet, but each dog is different and it took months of trial and error to find the winning combination for Anna. I tried Origen but it had shellfish in it which I found out Anna is allergic to. Origen is a good food but has so many ingredients in it that it is hard to work out which is causing the problem. A food with minimum ingredients is best until you know which Kelly is sensitive to. I always weigh a new dried food as they vary so much in volume and weight and how big is a cup It is easy to overfeed a good dry food as they have higher quality, easily digested ingredients so you don't need to feed as much as the cheaper ones.

I'm sure you will find an answer to Kelly's problem soon, let us know the test results and try not to worry.

[Guest Stripeyfan]

OK I guess I can stop panicking, then... Thanks again for all the replies so far, I've just spoken to the greyhound sanctuary we got Kelly from and they don't think it was his food. They say there's a virus going round that affects primarily greys, and that several of their dogs have had it... but the symptoms are loss of appetite, black diarrhoea and lethargy. The only one of those he's had was the lethargy which disappeared after he had his ABs - the diarrhoea was always a 'normal' colour (no blood so far, touch wood, just the mucus). So now I'm REALLY confused. But tempted to stick with the bland diet as I think it's big coincidence that the diarrhoea came back whenever we tried to give him his kibble again. He does seemed to have firmed up a bit, though not sure if that's just because he was on Pro-Kolin, which he finished this morning... guess we will just have to wait and see if we get a 3am wake-up call tonight! He's sulking now 'cause I bought him a squeaky fox stuffie earlier, which I just had to take away again because he's ALREADY managed to chew a hole in it!! Will hopefully be able to update with test results tomorrow. P.S. to Longdog Lady, is that your girl with the tennis ball? She is IDENTICAL to Kelly!

[Guest Greyt_dog_lover]

Maybe you could also ask your vet about "FortaFlora". My last foster injested a toy that sat in his stomach for a week before he vomited it up. The whole time he started getting "D" as well as vomiting. Long story short, and an emergency surgery as well, he was put on FortaFlora and within a few days of that as well as normal kibble, his stool was back to nice firm stool as well as he started gaining weight (as soon as we found the tapeworm and killed that off too).

[Guest longdoglady]

Just checking on how Kelly is and wondering if he had is results yesterday?

 

From one stripey grey owner to another.

[Guest Stripeyfan]

Just checking on how Kelly is and wondering if he had is results yesterday?

 

From one stripey grey owner to another.

 

Hello, thanx for asking. Results aren't in yet... got to wait until Monday. Hhis Stripeyness seems to be steadily improving though (touch lots and lots of wood) and we had almost-firm poo today (touch even more wood!) Needless to say we're going to stick with the chicken and rice for another few days to make sure he's really ok (heartbreaking for him eh!) before attempting to get him on the Burns kibble. He came to visit me at work today... DH was walking him in the park nearby and sneaked him in to say hello! Made a kinda boring day very very nice!! Will update with results soon I hope...

[SAVED2]

Stress has a lot to do with the problem , everything is new to him.

[4My2Greys]

I'm glad to hear that Kelly aka His Stripeyness is doing better. I wonder if when you start him on the kibble, if you were to soak it until it actually gets soft if that would help with the digestion. I did this when my bulldog Bruiser was having a problem. It takes awhile to get it soft so I so I would soak it overnight in a covered food container that I kept in the refrigerator and then add hot water in the morning to warm it up. I would then start soaking his meal for the evening the same way. I was just thinking it might be easier on his stomach than trying to digest the hard kibble.