New Adopter - Issues With Crating / Poo

[Guest ismaris]

Hello GreyTalk,

I'm not sure if this belongs in health/medical, diet, or behavior, because it's sort of a mash of all three. I'll just post here and hopefully that's permissible. I am the recent adopter of a 2-year old male greyhound named Panzer. We just adopted him 12 days ago, and he was fostered for two and a half weeks prior to our adoption. I'll describe the issues we are having below:

My girlfriend and I both work fulltime jobs, and we have been crating Panzer while we are at work. Unfortunately, every day we have kept him crated, we come back to him having gone poo in his crate, and at least within the last week, he eats that poo. I keep a live skype session on his crate all day so I can monitor him while at work, and below is what I have observed:

7:40am - Crate Panzer and head off to work

8:30am - Arrive at work, and pull up Skype to observe him. Usually he is standing in his crate, rooing. He alternates between laying down for 5-10 minutes and rooing for a couple of minutes.

10am-3pm - Panzer will begin rooing and showing signs of anxiety, and then he will turn in his crate a few times, dig back his bedding with his claws, and then squat in his crate. After pooing, he will eat some of this poo.

Post-poo - after taking his poo, he pretty much sleeps for the rest of the day until we arrive home.

Obviously, this is not great for us to come home to after a day at work. We have to take him out, bathe him, clean the poo off his bedding, do a laundry cycle to clean it all up, and pretty much we have been repeating this process everyday. Some important points to mention:

- Panzer was fostered with another grey and was always crated beside her, making our house the first house he has been completely alone in. The foster reported that panzer was fine in his crate all day, and that he never had any accidents in his crate.

- Though the foster put Panzer through a treatment of Panacur, Last Wednesday I found a tapeworm proglottid in his poo. We took him to the vet, who confirmed this was a tapeworm, and started another round of fenbendazole that finished on Saturday. This tapeworm infestation dramatically increases my own anxiety about him ingesting his own poo while crated, as it carries a high risk of reinfection.

- In his first week, I found three fleas on Panzer, and put him on fipronil as treatment. This was likely the source of his tapeworms, and certainly a factor for reinfection. I haven't found any fleas since Sunday, but I am wanting to pursue a more aggressive flea treatment than fipronil.

- My foster was unclear in his communication which food he had been feeding panzer (He said he had mixed multiple brands, from purina pro plan to blue buffalo), and that it shouldn't matter which food I ended up going with. We currently have panzer on newman's own organics.

My girlfriend and I have tried lots of different things to make his crate day easier. We have spent loads of time with him in the crate with us beside him, and he is fine. He will sit in there and nap. We leave for short trips to the store, and then longer trips, and generally, he is fine with that (No poo accidents). We crate him about 20 minutes before going to work, and give him some fresh water inside his crate, as well as a kong stuffed with peanut butter and his favorite toy. We have given him pumpkin sporadically, and some rice, but we have not been consistent with this. He generally presents no anxiety until I am at work. We started with feeding him two cups of kibble in the morning, and two cups in the evening, but since he has presented these issues, we switched to 1 cup in the morning and 3 cups in the evening. I am wondering if he would do better (less poo throughout the day) with a 2 cups after work and 2 cups before bedtime schedule, that way he could digest it over night and poo before work in the morning. If this issue persists for a couple more weeks, I am debating leaving him gated in the kitchen instead of crated, as I do not want him to be laying in / eating his own poo. I would rather clean up a mess on the kitchen floor than have that happen. I also think it might be prudent to change his food if this persists much longer, as he's been on newman's for 12 days and still has very soft, soupy poo.

I appreciate any tips you guys can give me. I am really giving this my best shot, but I hate seeing him miserable throughout the day..

[Feisty49]

I've had no experience with this problem but if I were in your shoes, I would experiment with him out of his crate. When you leave him for a short time, such as shopping on weekend days, do you crate him? If you do, leave him out of the crate next time and see how it goes, meaning does he freak out, does he poo or pee all over, does he chew on things, etc. We all know Greys are crated at the track. They have to be. I've never thought that meant they liked it, especially after experiencing living in a house.

 

Again, if I were in your shoes, I would have a goal of my dog not having to be crated at all. That's just me because I stopped using the crate for my Annie on day #2 or #3 post adoption (3 years ago) and let her have the run of the house. She never caused a problem. There are some who disagree about not using the crate and there are some who agree. What often works is leaving the crate up and accessible (door always open) to the dog has the choice of using the crate or not. IMO, what works best for the dog, without him/her having issues or chewing down the place, is what I would do.

 

Another thing, how long is your morning walk before work? The longer the walk, the more likely it is he'll empty himself.

 

Food: Yikes about mixing all kinds of brands. But hey, whatever worked or was easy for the foster home. The more you read Greytalk the more you'll find that there are many of us who don't buy into the high-end dog food as the best to offer. I'm one of them. Once the worm issue is gone, you'll find what kibble works for Panzar and keep an open mind re quality of kibble. You want something that gives him energy, keeps his coat looking good and doesn't give him diarrhea.

 

Good luck -- and we need pictures.