Looking for any wisdom....now 7 year old Great Dane (185 lbs.) from a rescue group five years ago
has had issues with diarrhoea from the beginning. He came to the rescue with parasites. Have had
5 years of practice dealing with it but it seems to have settled to a weekly pattern, sometimes longer periods of quiescence but about once a week he has a liquid stool with no change to his
diet or routine. He is on a veterinarian GI kibble with a bit of watered down "Wellness Turkey and Sweet Potato" to wet it (and because he loves it!).
Am wondering if there is any protocol recommended--I used to hold his next feeding when he had an episode but I don't any longer because it doesn't seem to make any difference and it happens too often to deprive him of food weekly. I sometimes leave out the watered down canned food for a day. It always lasts about a day regardless of measures taken and then he is back to solid stool. Have been giving him people Imodium with his food for a day. Keep doing this?
His vets don't seem to have any (lower cost) insights. I don't want to subject him to anything invasive--he's too old.
p.s. he had gastropexy several years ago.

Is he on any vet ordered meds? Just curious: Did the vet talk at all about colitis, IBS/IBD (irritable bowel syndrome/disease)? His symptoms are a lot like each of these. Dogs can be managed with these with meds & diet if he indeed may have any of these.

Hopefully you will get to the bottom of this for him.

I agree with Anne. This has to be checked out.
There is also a possibility with fungo. Not the ones, dog's can catch on their skin, ther are more critical ones inside their body. Via a normal blood scan they will not surely discover it. They wll have to target this exactly.
Next thing are worms. Of course most people deworm their dogs regularly. But not all especies of worms are discovered so easily.

Same thing with people. We can live with worms inside of us, without even thinking about such a thing. Very often we don't even have any symptoms for some years. Lots of people notice after some time only some alteration with their excrements, (consistency, colour, frequency, variations between diarrhea and constipation).

It can not be discovered via one general examination of the excrements, it has to undergo varios exactly targetted examinations.

I hope you have a good Vet, who will consider all this. Here nothing can be resolved with rush examination, everything has to be looked at thoroughly step by step.

I wish you good luck. Those things are very difficult for the dog and his owner. So sorry you have to go through all this. Let us know how your dog is doing. Fingers crossed!

We had this issue with one of our dogs in the past and it was really related to stress. When dogs get stressed it can mess with the good/bad bacteria down there and the bad can overrun the good and cause the runs. We put ours on a good probiotic and switched from kibble to raw and then it only happened a couple times a year from then on. Not sure what GI kibble is, but I don't trust vet kibble at all - it's usually stuff that's not healthy and can even make things worse. AND it costs a fortune...

I, too, am curious to know if he's ever been prescribed any meds by your vet, and what kind of a response he had, if any? I sympathize with you as I am dealing with a nine-year-old large breed dog who has chronic but intermittent bouts of diarrhea. In her case, she will get diarrhea that lasts for three or four days, maybe once every month or so. There are a couple of antibiotics that we have discovered work wonders for our dog.

I can't help at all with the dietary questions, as I know nothing about the prescription diets. Like you, though, I have noticed that the diarrhea doesn't seem to be associated with her diet and that withholding food or putting her on a bland diet did not seem to speed her recovery.

I believe this thread goes back to the original thread by the same owner & about the Same dog from 5/6/16.
're: great Dane with diarrhea

I had the same thought!!

 Quote: Anne Jones

I believe this thread goes back to the original thread by the same owner & about the Same dog from 5/6/16.
're: great Dane with diarrhea

In addition to May of 2016, Kim also posted about this issue in March of 2013 and received a lot of good information from Anne, Connie, Betty, and others back then. It definitely seems to be a recurring problem with her dog, which can be perplexing and frustrating. (I know from experience!)

In skimming those previous threads, I'm still not clear if the Flagyl helped the diarrhea, and I'm not clear if he's been on any further rounds of Flagyl or any other prescription meds over these few years. I believe it was Anne who mentioned in a previous thread that severe parasitic infection can cause long-term damage to the gut, even after the parasites are gone, and Kim did say the dog was rescued with giardia, worms, and fleas.

My dog who has similar issues is also a rescue, so I don't know her health history before I got her, but she has chronic gut issues, and with her, a round of Flagyl is quickly curative and gives us a good month, at least, of good stools afterwards. I have also used Tylan in the past, which was also immediately curative, but my vet is reluctant to prescribe that now.

Unfortunately, I have not found a dietary protocol that makes any difference one way or the other with my dog.

I'm so sorry, that this problem is not solved yet. I know how such things concern us awfully. I myself have no solution, but when our Vet comes next week to examine our dogs again, I'll ask him about this. We don't have the greatest specialists here, but who knows, sometimes we experience surprises.