Late Night Diarrhea (New To Having A Dog)

[Guest Bagel]

Around 4:30am (Saturday morning), 2.5 year old pup gets up and urinates in the house, in almost 4 months he has never exhibited this behavior. I get up and clean it, and get back into bed. Minutes later, he gets back up and unleashes a mighty diarrhea in the hallway.

 

Extenuating circumstances:

 

He's got separation anxiety, and my summer class schedule just changed from 2x 8 hour days to 4x 4 hour days this past Monday. On Thursday, he ate part of a rubber spatula while I was in class.

 

With that in mind, I took him for a roughly 2 hour walk from 7 to 9 pm (Friday night), with 2 water breaks included. He made 4 stools, all diarrhea - as expected, I assumed the small rubber parts he consumed would upset his stomach.

 

Findings:

 

His gums are of normal color, moist to touch. Dehydration is not currently an issue, and is being monitored.

 

His behavior is relatively normal, no guarding behaviors or anything out of the ordinary.

 

His food has not changed in 3 months. I can rule out food allergy. He has not gotten into the trash, and foods are not left on the counters - although the aforementioned spatula was on the stove.

 

He is up to date on his monthly Trifexis, so I'd like to believe it's not worms - but he's my first pup and I don't know the signs.

 

No blood has been seen, in either urine or stool. Usually this isn't a concern, but I've been keeping an eye open for bits of rubber from the spatula. Which is also red.

 

SO:

 

Does any of this sound alarming? Do dogs just ... get diarrhea? The stooling in the house is what concerns me most, that the extremely long walk was a poor idea, or that the altered schedule has created some excess stress.

 

My plan of action at this point is to fast him for the next 24 hours, except for water and spoonful or two of raw honey.

[JohnF]

Stress diarrhea isn't usually of the 'explosive' kind. They can pick up bugs from just about anything and in summer it's easy to get bird mess in outside water or on grass. Giardia could be a possibility here. Tick bite diseases also need to be considered. So if the problems continue I'd take the dog to the vet.

[EllenEveBaz]

^{I agree with the fasting. Give his system a rest. As for the cause, my guess is rubber spatula reaction.}

[Guest AtticusMom]

Atticus, who was about 2.5 when we got him, chomped his way through a couple of pairs of rubber flip-flops (we learned our lesson, and bought a fancy cupboard to house our shoes near the front door ). I was alarmed, and talked to our vet about it, who said that the amount of rubber he had ingested probably wouldn't be a problem. I never saw any of our flip-flops in his poop.

 

What does his behavior usually look like when he has the separation anxiety issue? Is it possible something else in his environment happened to set him off? For example, we have had fireworks going off (during the day) in our neighborhood this last week, due to July 4th weekend?

[Guest Bagel]

The separation issue was really only brought up to explain the spatula - I talked it through with my adoption group and they gave me a handful of things to look for and try.

 

Also I should mention, there's been no vomiting or appearance of pain. I think it was a "6am haven't slept and have never dealt with a sick dog before" post