I am in the veterinary profession and train service dogs as a hobby. I have successfully trained Staffordshire Terriers as disability dogs in the past and have now moved on to the challenge of the Malinois. We recently acquired Bosco (now 5.5 month's old) who is being trained in Schutzhund. At the age of approximately 4 month's old, we obtained Bosco's littermate Blaze and she became my wife's dog. Blaze is also being trained with Schutzhund methods and will work in agaility and possibly detection work (NARCS or Explosives). We have two healthy dogs and they are from a working line (75%). After Blaze introduced giardia to our household, we promptly abolished it. Now any time there is significant variation with the "norm" we get runny stool again. Are Mals prone to upset tummies with stress as a breed specific tendency? For further explanation of the situation, these dogs go everywhere with us - even shopping. The are no health issues as I am in the veterinary field and have healthy dogs. When a Staffy I trained a few years back was recently rescued from an unsafe environment and dropped on our doorstep, we got the runny poo again (from Bosco who has assumed the dominant pack role). We crate our dogs and Bosco nor Blaze were exposed to the unexpected visitor. They stayed in their crates the whole time and the visiting Staffy was put into her own crate. Are Mal Nerves this sensative?

Is this happening with all of your dogs??

I would say that Mals ARE high strung but I have never had nor heard of nerve issues like that. Especially more than one dog having the same symptoms.

Maybe there is a temperament or nerve issue in the lineage they are out of?

Talk to the breeder that you got them from and see what they say.

Was the Staff there for just a day? You mentioned that your dogs were crated the whole time. If any kind of disease or illness was brought in, I am sure you know that a dog can walk through something and share it with all the others, not to mention the bacteria they pick up outside and bring indoors.

Yeah, the Staffy was there for just the night and Bosco was very disappointed and woke me whining as he had just messed his crate. He never does this. Blaze in her crate accross the room, was fine.

The breeders have been helpful, but reticent to mention any lineage specific nerve - stoamch issues. These are our first Mals so we are learning.. Thanks for the help. We appreciate it.

What type of service work are you doing? Maybe it is not enough mental and physical stimulation for them.
How much exercise do they get other than work? (like running, playing fetch, playing tug and things like that)

I am not sure that my Mal could be a "calm" type service dog. She is so high drive right now that she would go nuts I think. She is a great SAR Human Remains dog and I have been told that I should train her in PPD, however, I may plug in some live find SAR work on her so I cannot train her to be a PPD. (yet, anyway)

This is an issue with a lot of dogs when their nerves get turned on for an extended period of time. If all the medical reasons have been looked at then it's a case of nerves which can be getting turned on by the stress of training, enviornment or not enough exercise. You can try extricating the dog from one of these things one at a time and see what happens.

diarrhea can definitely be brought on by stress. the first night we had our rescue here, he woke up in the morning covered in excrement, in a pool of it. it happened in his sleep.

i chalked it up to the stress of him losing his family, including a couple of kids he was very attached to.

if the dog isn't acting sick, remove it from the stressful situation and see if that helps.

I tried removing the stress and it seemed to help. Perhaps a little more exercise is in order. Some nights we go nealry three miles (3-4 x weekly). They do a lot with tracking, and the like. I hadn't had Bosco on the range for a few weeks.... so that probably isn't it. We had them both on the range today with small cal fire and they did ok. We'll see if we wake up in a pile of poo or not tommorow! LOL Then I wil have my answer I suppose? The dogs are super healthy... so it just must be nerves. Have an email out to Begium from his ancestor's breeders to check the hx... hopefully the write back soon but we are starting to think its nerves because we ruled everything else out. Not knowing too much about the Mal breed, we thought maybe somebody else was having similar probs... Thanks for the replies, LB

We contacted the breeder. he said he thought it was more along the lines of keyed up puppy. Bosco is very high keyed and lots of drive. No poo this morning. so it just maybe stress. Thanks for your input guys!