Intermittent Soft/wet Stools

[jshell]

This morning was the third time in a week and a half that Betty, my 11.5 year old greyhound, had the following stool: it starts out solid and normal enough, then degrades (in the same poop) to mushy "melted soft serve ice cream" consistency. This is usually followed up on either the same walk, or within a couple of hours, with a much wetter poop. A couple of days ago this looked like pure diarrhea; this morning that second poop had a lot more recognizable chunks (but still very wet) with a little bit of water at the end.

 

She ate breakfast fine, both on monday (eating after such stool) and this morning (before our walk).

 

On Monday I stayed home to keep an eye on her, lest I have any accidents or in case it was colitis (we went through a round of this a couple of months ago), but unlike normal diarrhea (or worse) times, she never had to go poop again, even though I gave her plenty of chances. Not even on our evening walk, nor overnight. The next morning (yesterday) things were solid again, and we were back on schedule.

 

But this morning, we seem to be repeating.

 

Diet hasn't changed, but we have just gone through a big weather change a few days ago.

 

Sensitive tummy to weather changes? Allergies? This is intermittent and strange and doesn't seem severe, but this is the third time this has happened in a week and a half; second time this week. And as she gets older, I tend to fret .

[JohnF]

Peggy was like that until she reached a crisis this summer with Gastro-Enteritis and a bleeding ulcer.

 

With vet treatment (Antibiotic, Sucralfate, Omepreazole - the latter still given one a day) and a change of diet we got her back under control.

 

The old diet was an affordable Turkey & Rice kibble topped with 1/2 tin of wet dog food (tripe based things were her favourite)

 

The new diet, which works, was got to by feeding Royal Canin Gastro-Intestinal cans plus some of the same in kibble form for 2 weeks, and then going gradually onto a premium hypoallergenic Duck & Brown Rice kibble, topped with 1/2 can of real lamb and no fillers wet dog food, and the Royal Canin Gastro Intestinal kibble kept to give instead of treats.

 

If their bowel gets irritated there will only be a small amount of firm poop followed by progressively more watery stool. They also have a habit of eliminating whatever is near the end of the system before a run.

 

If the poop cycle problem is like every 2 or 3 weeks then think about Giardia and social factors too.

[Guest Johberry]

I'm wondering if it is possible that she might have picked up any parasites? We've had our boy for two months now and he came with hookworms. He's still battling them as some days his poops are perfect and other days they are as you describe. Olewo carrots and beets have worked very well as well as changing his diet to half kibble/half raw in which he gets kibble with Olewo and probiotics for breakfast and then raw for dinner.

[jshell]

We went through what I believe to be food allergies a few years ago and have settled on fowl-based foods and treats (often with things like 'healthy digestion!' in their name), with a daily dash of pro-biotics in her breakfast. We also do the half-kibble, half-canned setup. I think that this setup is still working out. Sometimes when soft stool shows up, canned pumpkin gets added. I try to go through such a can in a week, but I think this last can lasted a little bit longer. Think it could have gone a little bad? I just noticed the can says it can be refrigerated for up to 3 days, and I think the bits I added to Betty's food on Monday may have been in there for 8 or 9 days...

[duncan41]

We just adopted a senior with a 6 year long history of "colitis". My Vet did a stool ELISA and lo and behold, he has hookworm. One treatment so far, bland diet of boiled hamburger, rice, probiotic, Standard Process "Zymex" and a Chinese herb blend called Eight Gentlemen and we have solid poop! Next is to wean him off Sulfasalazine and slowly introduce a more species appropriate diet.

 

Can't stress how important the ELISA is.

[Guest Lygracilux]

Im going through the same thing as you. Have been since we adopted Fusion almost two months ago.

He had the super runs for over a week after we got him.

His fecal tested negative for worms, so the vet said to try a different food because it may be a chicken allergy. We put him on Natural Balance LID Venison, and things firmed up abit for a while. But now its like one minute he has perfect poo, the next its like mush.

Vet said to de-worm again, so were waiting for that to arrive in the mail, and to change to a salmon based food as the venison may be too rich. He also said to add a probiotic, so we are doing that as well. We're hoping that solves the problem. Goodluck with yours.

[jshell]

Well we had a day just like Tuesday: she was a little hesitant about breakfast until we went outside. (She didn't poop at all yesterday after the morning's soft /wet stools). Big solid hefty stool. Later on our morning walk came the second which was squishy but still normal. Evening walk was solid, but smaller than normal, and a little bit green. Exact same output as Tuesday. Weird. So we will see if tomorrow goes back to the soft serve pattern. I haven't seen traces of worms, but if tomorrow repeats I'll call the vet. Thanks to your responses I think I'll have a better idea what to ask sbout. But I'm hoping it doesn't repeat and we stay back on our normal pattern.