Diarrhea after DAPP vaccine??

[4leggedclover]

Hi all,

I’ve had my almost 8 year girl for 3 years now, and she had been doing exceptionally well for the last 2 years after the initial one year battle with chronic persistent hookworm, chicken allergy/intolerance, and gastroenteritis.

For the last two years, we had her eating beef Tylee’s with weekly yak stick treats, special meals of fully cooked ground beef one weekend a month, and religiously fed her Interceptor Plus for heart worm and hookworm prevention each month.  She was happy and healthy until this past weekend.

The only things I can think of that happened was:

On Saturday, we took her to the vet for her annual physical, and she received the DAPP distemper, adenovirus, parainfluenza, and parvovirus vaccine as well as the rabies vaccine, both of which she was due for according to vet records.  We fed her out of a new bag of her regular beef Tylee’s food for breakfast and dinner on Saturday. This food has never been recalled to my knowledge, and I just contacted Chewy today to ask if they had any reports of a recall or illness from the food, which they said they had not.

We fed her cooked ground beef and cooked green beans as she had been eating once a month for the past 2 years on Sunday, April 28. I know there is a ground beef recall, but this was human grade, grass fed ground beef that was fully cooked, and my husband and I ourselves ate ground beef from the same batch earlier in the week.  We also fed her a yaky stick, also from Chewy which she has had weekly for the last year or two from a new bag.  Chewy has no reports of any illness from the yaky sticks when I called today.

She is mostly an indoor dog and is taken out for walks 3 times a day around our neighborhood on leash, and rarely even meets other dogs on leash. Nothing about her walking or exposures changed this weekend.

On Monday, she began having horrific liquid brown stools.  Thankfully no blood and no vomiting and she still is behaving normally with normal appetite, but the she messed the house which she has only ever done once before when she was severely ill with gastroenteritis and hookworm.  We thought perhaps the hookworm was back and fed her the Interceptor Plus 2 days earlier than we normally would have (May 1).  We also started feeding her plain white rice mixed with Tylees. 

On Tuesday, she is alternating between liquid and pudding-textured light brown stools. No blood, no vomiting, still behaving seemingly normally. We continue to feed her rice and Tylees and hope the hookworm meds kick in soon.

This morning on Wednesday, horrific liquid stools again, and hesitated to eat her rice and Tylees. No blood, and no vomiting.

I am a healthcare worker and it pains me to even consider this, but I’m baffled that her Tylees, ground beef, or yaky stick could have made her sick. We have never missed a dose of Interceptor Plus, so I don’t know why her hookworm would be back, and the nature of her stool was much more mucousy and orange/yellow when she had hookworm with occasional tinges of blood.

Could my girl be having a reaction to the vaccines she received on Saturday?  The diarrhea started 48 hours after her vaccines which doesn’t seem to fit a normal vaccine reaction timeframe, but this is the only thing I can think of that was different about this weekend.  Is the DAPP vaccine a killed or live vaccine? Could a live vaccine give a dog parvovirus?  I will be taking her back to the vet today or tomorrow who is going to prescribe a course of metronidazole but would appreciate any other insight anyone might have.

Thanks in advance!

[greysmom]

Could be a lot of things, not necessarily related or relatable to anything.   FWIW, we had to switch to Interceptor for a couple months for a different issue, but both my boys had horrible diarrhea after getting it.  Didn't affect my girls at all, and all the pills were from the same box.  The ground beef recall was for human grade beef, so it's possible this could be the issue, but, while it could have been any of the things you describe, it also could be none, or a combination.    And sometimes poop just happens.

Make sure your dog is staying hydrated while she's having diarrhea and get her in to the vet asap.  I always fast my dogs with diarrhea until it stops, then begin feeding small amounts of a bland diet several times a day.

[MaryJane]

I do a 3 week interval between vaccines because vaccines are expected to produce an immune response and sometimes this can be vomiting and diarrhea.  Sounds like this has been going on long enough to warrant a trip to the vet.

[Bizeebee]

2 hours ago, 4leggedclover said:

She is mostly an indoor dog and is taken out for walks 3 times a day around our neighborhood on leash, and rarely even meets other dogs on leash. Nothing about her walking or exposures changed this weekend.

Just because there's nothing new that you see, doesn't mean there isn't anything new out there. You may not have met them, but there could be new dogs walking your route, or regular dogs who picked up a bug, or even wild animals moving through the area carrying who knows what. Whether it's hooks or another bug, you never know what is out in the dirt, on their paws, getting eaten, licked or sniffed when they are out there, or when they come back in.

If I had to guess, she probably just picked up something in the environment and a course of met will do the trick.

We also use Olewo carrots in these kinds of situations, combined with whatever bland food you're doing, it definitely helps our guy more than pumpkin.

[4leggedclover]

3 hours ago, Bizeebee said:

Just because there's nothing new that you see, doesn't mean there isn't anything new out there. You may not have met them, but there could be new dogs walking your route, or regular dogs who picked up a bug, or even wild animals moving through the area carrying who knows what. Whether it's hooks or another bug, you never know what is out in the dirt, on their paws, getting eaten, licked or sniffed when they are out there, or when they come back in.

If I had to guess, she probably just picked up something in the environment and a course of met will do the trick.

We also use Olewo carrots in these kinds of situations, combined with whatever bland food you're doing, it definitely helps our guy more than pumpkin.

True, I’m starting to wonder if she picked something up while at the vet from another sick dog. We always wipe her paws and butt whenever she comes back inside from being outside/pooping. I guess we should start wiping her face/nose too. I’ll do anything to try to prevent her from getting sick again. That first year of constant chronic blood tinged diarrhea was so miserable for everyone. 

 

Edited May 1, 2019 by 4leggedclover

[cleptogrey]

boiled rice and either boiled ground chicken or turkey for a couple of days. skip the green beans, skip the yak stick and other treats. do talk to your vet, he may prescribe something if it's gastroentiritis(up set stomach/intestines) . but from reading the post the goodies sound like they may be the culprit. a call into your vet will not hurt and don't be shy. 

i know bully sticks and treats like that aways result in upset guts around here. the might be a coincidence w/ timing between shots and stomach upset. i always do the DAPP shot, wait 2-3 weeks, then other boosters. i don't think that the DAPP can be broken up. 

[racindog]

18 hours ago, 4leggedclover said:

True, I’m starting to wonder if she picked something up while at the vet from another sick dog. We always wipe her paws and butt whenever she comes back inside from being outside/pooping. I guess we should start wiping her face/nose too. I’ll do anything to try to prevent her from getting sick again. That first year of constant chronic blood tinged diarrhea was so miserable for everyone. 

 

I had a pup pick up parvo at the vet and die. The vet tech had cradled him in her arms. When we left she had not changed her shirt/blouse. Guarantee you that every dog/pup she helped with got exposed the whole rest of the day. Probably how mine caught it. I Don't use that vet anymore. And you would never guess it to look at his clinic which was 'clean' and spotless. Last year my friends 3 dogs picked up the dog flu at another vet.  I worked at a university vet school. I know proper isolation procedures/protocols. The majority of vets I have seen in private practice basically ignore them.

[greysmom]

It's easy to want to try and find some cause for an illness, and, as you can see from the posts, that it's also easy to find examples of same.  But dogs are really very healthy and resilient, and as long as your dog is fully vaccinated there's really a very small chance she picked up anything from her environment. 

I hope she's doing better now and that you can get to the bottom of her issues.

 

[tbhounds]

Could have developed stress colitis simply from the trip to the veterinary clinic.

[4leggedclover]

Hi again,

I couldn’t figure out how to edit my original post but wanted to give an update.

Wednesday - horrible liquid stools in the morning.  Fed her a mix of rice and Tylees. Began giving her a 500mg metronidazole pill I had leftover from prior bouts of gastroenteritis.  Took her back to the vet in the afternoon who confirmed her behavior was fine, and prescribed a course of 250mg metronidazole twice a day.  She does not have another poop for the rest of the day and eats her bland rice and cooked ground beef dinner normally.

Thursday - things are looking up. She has small dry pellet poops in the morning. She eats her rice and Tylees mix and metronidazole with no issues. Thursday afternoon poop is large and toothpaste like. She eats rice and Tylees for dinner and metronidazole with no issues.

Friday - pudding-textured poops. No blood or vomiting. Still behaving normally, and eating rice and Tylees mix with a 250mg metronidazole for breakfast and dinner. We start feeding her a probiotic pill.

Saturday - liquid brown stools again. She starts eating grass. Stopped the Tylees and fed her a mix of ground beef and rice for breakfast with metronidazole. Took a stool sample to the vet and are still waiting for results. Offered her rice only for dinner, which she refused because she’s a carnivore. Still having nasty liquid brown stools, no blood. Chewy tells us again that no one else is having a problem with the Tylees food.

She seemed like she was on the verge of recovering for 2 day before getting horrific liquid diarrhea again on Saturday. She has not missed a course of metronidazole. 

I am thinking of fasting her completely until the diarrhea stops and then slowly reintroducing cooked beef and rice, although I’m extremely paranoid now that she has developed some sort of beef intolerance/allergy similar to how she could no longer eat chicken after a prolonged bout of gastroenteritis when we first got her.  Should I try a different protein like pork when we restart her on food? I also looked up on the Merck manuals and saw that a dog her weight should be getting 44mg/kg of metronidazole, which is about 1000mg a day - is 250mg twice a day as the vet prescribed being underdosed? We are so worried as the metronidazole seemed to be helping and then her diarrhea worsened. Does she have pancreatitis?? What are we missing??

Again, any advice greatly appreciated!

Edited May 5, 2019 by 4leggedclover

[Bizeebee]

Fasting would probably be preferable at this point  

Secondary to that, Amazon prime yourself some Olewo carrots. 

And the stool sample results will more than likely have your answer. What sort of testing are they doing on it?

Worry about food intolerances once you know more, there are too many variables to make that assessment right now. 

And I'd say let your (hopefully greyhound savvy) vet worry about her med dosages. By all means ask, but greyhounds often can't just be dosed by weight because of their special bodily make up. They tend to be more sensitive to most drugs because they don't have the fat of the average dog. And if it's a variety of worms or pancreatitis met isn't going to have helped anyway. 

I know it sucks right now, but if you're confident in her hydration levels and general demeanor is still good, then you unfortunately probably just have to wait for results. If she takes a turn, demeanor-wise then weekend/e-vet might be in order, but if she's acting normal besides the poop, they may not do a whole lot. 

[cleptogrey]

the dosages for metronidazole have been revised. they are now lower than they were just a couple of years ago.

annie had chronic colitis, she was on metronidazole(flagyl)250 mg 2xs daily for 6 months until we were able to wean her off. we went to one per day, waited to see if that was enough, then back and forth to 2, down to one then one every other day, every 3 days, eventually off of it. 

try cooking an entire chicken(quarter, it cooks faster) in rice and water/chicken broth combo. then just debone and chop the chicken and mix in. it's easy on their system and no dog will refuse it. personally, i omitted commercial dog food for quite some time. it takes a while for their guts to be ready for kibble. it sounds like you went back to kibble too fast.

have you considered giardiasis? pancreatitis is usually presented with pain, but it's worth while checking as well. but ONLY YOUR VET CAN GIVE YOU AN ACCURATE or NEAR ACCURATE DIAGNOSIS. also, do a full spin for worms. many vets treat the symptoms for giardiasis since it's hard to find. be patient and please keep your pup on a bland diet. they won't waste away, there is more than enough moisture content in rice. if they are on rice, don't worry about water intake.

[MaryJane]

You can try to give cooked white fish like tilapia just in case there is an intolerance to the beef (as well as the chicken that you mentioned happened earlier).  I find that the probiotics are really important in getting the poops better - which one are you using?

You might also want to try adding some cooked oatmeal (preferably the old-fashioned 5 minute) type to the food - it provides good fiber and I give it to my dogs every day.  You can give 2 to 3 tablespoons and add a touch of honey to sweeten it a bit and mix it with fish or hamburger.

[4leggedclover]

On 5/5/2019 at 6:09 AM, cleptogrey said:

the dosages for metronidazole have been revised. they are now lower than they were just a couple of years ago.

annie had chronic colitis, she was on metronidazole(flagyl)250 mg 2xs daily for 6 months until we were able to wean her off. we went to one per day, waited to see if that was enough, then back and forth to 2, down to one then one every other day, every 3 days, eventually off of it. 

try cooking an entire chicken(quarter, it cooks faster) in rice and water/chicken broth combo. then just debone and chop the chicken and mix in. it's easy on their system and no dog will refuse it. personally, i omitted commercial dog food for quite some time. it takes a while for their guts to be ready for kibble. it sounds like you went back to kibble too fast.

have you considered giardiasis? pancreatitis is usually presented with pain, but it's worth while checking as well. but ONLY YOUR VET CAN GIVE YOU AN ACCURATE or NEAR ACCURATE DIAGNOSIS. also, do a full spin for worms. many vets treat the symptoms for giardiasis since it's hard to find. be patient and please keep your pup on a bland diet. they won't waste away, there is more than enough moisture content in rice. if they are on rice, don't worry about water intake.

No pain according the vet on Wednesday, and seemingly no severe discomfort we can notice at home.

Fecal was negative according to the vet when they notified us with the results today.

We're 6 days into the metronidazole now and she still has large toothpaste textured stools with Olewo carrots added to her rice and ground beef diet.  She refused to eat any rice without the ground beef so we caved and have been giving her about a half cup of cooked ground beef with the rice.  She's behaving otherwise perfectly normally, which makes me extra paranoid that she has developed some sort of beef intolerance/allergy.  This is almost exactly how her chicken intolerance/allergy occurred - she had a bout of colitis/gastroenteritis and terrible diarrhea so we dutifully fed her a bland diet of boiled chicken and rice for weeks waiting for it to clear up.  She pretty much behaved normally during that time except for the liquid/pudding stools.  We randomly ran out of chicken one day and decided to cook up a package of ground beef we happened to have, and the liquid/pudding stool turned mostly solid pretty much within a day.  From then on, we only fed her beef, and now this new bout of colitis/diarrhea which won't stop even after a full 5 day course of metronidazole and bland beef and rice diet...

Edited May 7, 2019 by 4leggedclover

[4leggedclover]

On 5/5/2019 at 6:06 PM, MaryJane said:

You can try to give cooked white fish like tilapia just in case there is an intolerance to the beef (as well as the chicken that you mentioned happened earlier).  I find that the probiotics are really important in getting the poops better - which one are you using?

You might also want to try adding some cooked oatmeal (preferably the old-fashioned 5 minute) type to the food - it provides good fiber and I give it to my dogs every day.  You can give 2 to 3 tablespoons and add a touch of honey to sweeten it a bit and mix it with fish or hamburger.

We have the Vetriscience brand probiotic. Not sure if it did much for her even when she didn't have diarrhea but she's getting it once a day regardless.

We found the old bag of Olewo carrots from years ago from her first bout of colitis/gastroenteritis/hookworm and have been using that which has firmed up her poop to toothpaste texture, but still nowhere near the solid, small poops she had before this current illness. I suspect the underlying diarrhea is still there, but the carrots are just doing their job of bulking and firming it up.

We're 6 days into the metronidazole now on ground beef and rice diet (she refused the plain rice so we caved and added a bit of ground beef to it just so she'd get to eat something each day) and seems to be behaving perfectly normally other than the less than ideal poops which is exactly what happened with her chicken intolerance/allergy.  I'm trying to decide what protein to try her on next if the poops don't get better with ground beef in another 2 days.  I'm open to trying fish, but the Salmon version of Tylee's is more expensive than the beef which would not be cost effective in the long run especially since the salmon Tylee's only has 170 calories per scoop compared to the beef which is 270 calories per scoop. I'm not sure if turkey will "cross react" with chicken, and pork seems to be fairly high in fat.  Fingers crossed we don't have to get into the less common proteins like duck/rabbit/etc.

[4leggedclover]

On 5/5/2019 at 5:25 AM, Bizeebee said:

Fasting would probably be preferable at this point  

Secondary to that, Amazon prime yourself some Olewo carrots. 

And the stool sample results will more than likely have your answer. What sort of testing are they doing on it?

Worry about food intolerances once you know more, there are too many variables to make that assessment right now. 

And I'd say let your (hopefully greyhound savvy) vet worry about her med dosages. By all means ask, but greyhounds often can't just be dosed by weight because of their special bodily make up. They tend to be more sensitive to most drugs because they don't have the fat of the average dog. And if it's a variety of worms or pancreatitis met isn't going to have helped anyway. 

I know it sucks right now, but if you're confident in her hydration levels and general demeanor is still good, then you unfortunately probably just have to wait for results. If she takes a turn, demeanor-wise then weekend/e-vet might be in order, but if she's acting normal besides the poop, they may not do a whole lot. 

The vet called today and said her fecal was negative, but they did not tell me what they tested for.  

What should be checked in a fecal exam?  I'm guessing worms and giardia?  I'll call back tomorrow and ask what they looked for to double check.  I'm not sure the testing was done in house or if it was a send-out.

[cleptogrey]

5 hours ago, 4leggedclover said:

The vet called today and said her fecal was negative, but they did not tell me what they tested for.  

What should be checked in a fecal exam?  I'm guessing worms and giardia?  I'll call back tomorrow and ask what they looked for to double check.  I'm not sure the testing was done in house or if it was a send-out.

sometimes it's treat the symptoms since testing does not identify the culprit. giardia can be very difficult to find.  we just went thru inconclusive testing with jamie. tested for every tick borne or bacterial/fungi disease(we travel so he may have picked up something from another part of the country) . everything is negative.it's most likely that he started showing symptoms prior to titers rising.  rather than retesting he's on a 6 week protocol of doxy hoping this will get the bugger. so, we are treating the symptoms and checking for improvement on a regular basis.

personally i would stick with ONE source of protein, be it beef- just make a lot of hamburger patties and freeze them. you can just quick defrost and boil one and mix into warm rice.  don't change around. a good worming never hurt and giardiasis is 5 days of panacur repeated a month later the last time i looked it up. 

your vet did consider pancreatitis, right? they don't always run a fever with a bout of it. but it will show up in blood work. 

annie did worse on pumpkin and or oatmeal. the carrots did not make that much of a difference, she needed drugs to clean things up. how much weight has your dog lost? annie lost 10#s in a short period of time.

Edited May 7, 2019 by cleptogrey

[Bizeebee]

Did you ever switch to a GI prescription diet after/during bouts of the colitis/gastro issues the first time around?

If this does not turn out to be some sort of intestinal bug (any variety of parasites, but they could also do a stool culture), then that's really the only way to determine a food sensitivity. Once the gut has been damaged in some way, she's going to seem intolerant to almost anything, but that doesn't mean she truly is. The only way to find out is to let the gut heal first and then go from there, maybe ask your vet if you should be making a switch to a prescription diet for a little while?

Additionally, if she really does have a chicken sensitivity, then a prescription food is the only way to guarantee a non-contaminated bag of whatever food you are buying. Commercial (over the counter) brands are all manufactured on the same line at whatever plant is making them, and they are not compelled in any way to make sure that the previous batch of one protein type doesn't "contaminate" the next batch of a different protein type.