May 24, 2011
My pup continually has loose, watery stools. At first she had gardia, but no longer tests positive for it. Any advice?
Full Question:
Hi Cindy,I have a rescue pup, Shepard mix (small) about 8 months old. She seemed to have normal stools when we got her. I first started her out on a grain free natural kibble (call of the wild) and she had loose stools. She had a stool sample done and we found out she had gardia. We treated her with Pancur for 5 days and she had VERY loose watery stools during that time and for a couple more weeks after, we decided to switch her to raw diet cold turkey and the runny poop continued. We had another stool sample tested and it came back negative for worms or gardia but she continues to have runny poop and gas. I know she can have normal stools because I saw them when she first came to us. It was a month on natual kibble and about a month on raw and still is usually pudding and occasionally watery. Be were told by friends that Gardia is very hard to get rid of and I googled natural cures and found that GSE (grapefruit seed extract) was a great anti parasitic for both dogs and people and not harmful so as a precaution I began giving her drops in the ground beef, just in case the test was a false negative. What I am feeding her is chicken mostly, leg quarters, I feed her 2 times a day, a leg, little ground beef meatball and an egg in the morning, a thigh and a ground beef meatball in the evening. I am also giving her a probiotic cap once a day (she is 8 months and about 30 lbs). Anyway she still has pudding poop and we have had her for 2 months. I know our vet would ask what we are feeding and blame raw diet. I ordered Perfect form from your website and am waiting for it to come in the mail we will see what happens. I am at a loss though, any advice for me?
Thank you,
Courtney
Cindy's Answer:
The first thing I would recommend is to make sure you have reference materials on hand since you appear to be new to raw feeding. The 2 best books for learning about the raw diet are Raw Dog Food and Natural Nutrition for Dogs & Cats. We give both these books to our puppy customers and rarely have questions about the diet.
If a dog is having continuous soft stools, then you need to give a bland diet until you get her gut settled down. I wouldn’t be feeding chicken leg quarters or eggs. I’d likely cook some white meat chicken (no bones) and rice and feed that until her stools were normal. I would then GRADUALLY add some raw ground meat and if she was still doing ok, maybe go to bone in raw chicken breast. Leg quarters would only be added much later after she was having no issues with the bone in chicken breast. Eggs can cause loose stools in some dogs, so remove those from the diet for now.
In addition to probiotics, I would also suggest digestive enzymes.
Cindy Rhodes
If a dog is having continuous soft stools, then you need to give a bland diet until you get her gut settled down. I wouldn’t be feeding chicken leg quarters or eggs. I’d likely cook some white meat chicken (no bones) and rice and feed that until her stools were normal. I would then GRADUALLY add some raw ground meat and if she was still doing ok, maybe go to bone in raw chicken breast. Leg quarters would only be added much later after she was having no issues with the bone in chicken breast. Eggs can cause loose stools in some dogs, so remove those from the diet for now.
In addition to probiotics, I would also suggest digestive enzymes.
Cindy Rhodes
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