Food problems.

[Diane Farmer]

Scarlett is a double doodle, she is 10 months old and we have had her for 3 months.  The breeder was feeding her puppy food from tracker supply so we kept her on that, her stools were loose so we tried Rachael Ray's just three lamb and rice, her stools were still loose.. She got a bacteria infection from eating canadian geese stools and had diarrhea. the vet put her on medicine and Hills prescription diet i/d. after finishing her meds we went changed Merrick chicken and brown rice.  Everything seemed fine then the diarrhea came back, I took her to the vet and they didn't find anything wrong with her.  But put her back on meds and the Hills precription diet i/d food and we were weening her off the prescription food and mixing with the Merrick chicken and rice, after switching her to Merrick chicken and rice completely her diarrhea is back...Does anyone have any suggestions.  The vet is putting her back on the Hills presciption diet.  Help!

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

What formula Merrick food are you using, what formula Hill's diet did the vet prescribe, and what meds is/was she on?

What other foods/treats does she get?

Are you monitoring her outdoors so that she is not eating the goose poop or anything else now?

When was her last fecal culture done?

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Oops, I see you did list the formulas for both foods.

[Diane Farmer]

She had a fecal exam on 12/17/12. The also did a fecal giardia test and checked her pancreas nothing came up there. They prescribed her metronidazole & sulfassalazine.

She did get a bully stick and I put peanut butter in a sterilized cow bone recently.

The geese are gone and we cleaned up the yard. She have been watching her closely. The only thing I have seen her eat is some dirt. Don't ask me why. She does like to eat her meals, we feed her twice a day. And she is eager to eat.

We were using the canned hills I/d but now we are mixing it with the dry hill's I/d

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

I would not let them give you sulfasalazine again. That's used in extremely severe cases of Inflammatory Bowel Disease in dogs and in Crohn's disease patients, and it can have some really nasty side-effects, in addition to the fact that you don't use a drug like that for a puppy with diarrhea. My dog has IBD, and even so, his vets and specialists were reluctant to use that.

[jeanne & Lilly]

Hi Diane, Scarlett is adorable!
I certainly am not the expert here, but my (almost one year old) DD had similar problems.
After trying many different foods Lilly and her digestive system are happy with Honest Kitchen. She gets Preference, I add chicken, any meat can be added. It is on the pricey side but well worth it. She hasn't had diarrhea nor vomited since she started HK.
You'll get lots of great information here.
Good luck!

[Diane Farmer]

Honest kitchen, I will have to look into that where do u get it. How much chicken do u add? do you feed her twice a day? Scarlett is 42 lbs.

[jeanne & Lilly]

Smaller pet stores carry HK, you can search for retailers on their website. Protein added is based on weight and activity level. I feed Lilly twice a day, which we both had to get used to, she used to free feed.
When she was about 6 months she started choking on her kibble, I switched her to the adult version, so she'd get larger kibble. That's when the problems started, even though it was same brand and protein.

[Jill, Woody & Maxi]

Sometimes giardia takes weeks to show in a fecal exam..so maybe consider having the fecal run again.  Also, b/c of the antibiotics, you should give her some non fat plain yogurt..b/c you want to get the good bacteria back in her stomach.  We have had similar problems to you, and found that honest kitchen does help.  We were feeding Embark.  Good luck, and keep us posted.

[Rita and Fazzy]

When we brought our doodle boy home as a put (3 months ago), he had giardia.  We treated him for that, and the vet also put him on Fortiflora....didn't seem to be doing much good.  I went to one of our local natural pet supply stores and talked to them about it and they said alot of their customers have not had good success on Fortiflora, but had had great success with a pro/pre-biotic called Gentle Digest.  She said that most people said that it just took a couple of days and firm stools were back.  So....thought I'd give it a shot.  I swear, within about 2-3 days.....he was pooping normal (and I was soooo excited)....and we have used it here an there when he's had loose stools for one reason or another.  A friend of ours has a doodle as well and they were having issues with really loose stool, so I told them about it.....same thing for them...a couple of days and Hank has been pooping well since.  So...it's about $11 for 60 caps, so, worth giving it a shot as long as her stool samples aren't showing something else going on.

http://www.arknaturals.com/p/111/gentle-digest-probiotic-capsule

Good luck!!!  She's a sweeeetie!!!

Rita

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Gentle Digest is what I have used with great success when my dogs have been on antibiotics, too. It's an excellent product. It helps by replacing some of the good flora in the gut and creating an environment that encourages the growth of more good bacteria.

Fortiflora is a Purina product which also contains some of the worst ingredients out there, including a flavoring agent called "Animal Digest". Here is what the Dog Food Project's Ingredients To Avoid Section has to say about Animal Digest:

Animal Digest

AAFCO: A material which results from chemical and/or enzymatic hydrolysis of clean and      undecomposed animal tissue. The animal tissues used shall be exclusive of hair, horns, teeth,      hooves and feathers, except in such trace amounts as might occur unavoidably in good factory      practice and shall be suitable for animal feed. If it bears a name descriptive of its kind or      flavor(s), it must correspond thereto.     A cooked-down broth made from unspecified parts of unspecified animals. The animals used can      be obtained from any source, so there is no control over quality or contamination. Any kind      of animal can be included: "4-D animals" (dead, diseased, disabled, or dying prior to      slaughter), goats, pigs, horses, rats, misc. roadkill, animals euthanized at shelters,      restaurant and supermarket refuse and so on. This is what the vets give to sick dogs and charge a fortune for, and this is an example of the type of product you can expect from Purina.

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Here's the thing...something has to be causing the diarrhea. Until you know what is causing the issues, it's very difficult to fix them.

Jill is right, giardia doesn't show up in all fecals, and it can be very hard to get rid of. Metronidazole (Flagyl) alone won't do it. You need Panacur, too. We've had a lot of puppies here who came home with giardia, and after endless rounds of Metronidazole and other GI antibiotics, plus endless food changes, the dog's GI tract ends up being extremely sensitive and unable to process most kibbles. The antibiotics destroy the good bacteria in the digestive tract along with the bad, so there are none of the usual good flora in there to help her digest her food. Your puppy has also been through a lot of food changes in a very short time, some of them not very good, and with GI infections and the lack of good gut flora added to the mix, her digestive tract is not functioning properly.

Bully sticks are very tough for a lot of dog's GI tracts to handle, and if you're not buying the ones that are U.S. sourced, which most of them aren't, there's also a danger of contamination there. I would stop those immediately. Peanut butter has the highest fat content of just about any food you could find, and high fat foods can cause diarrhea, too. We have a lot of discussions here about safe chew options, you can do a search in the Food Group discussions for antlers- those work well for most people and do not contribute to GI problems.

The Hill's i/d is garbage; the ingredients are the worst I've seen...corn, floor sweepings, by-products and pork fat. BUT...it has a tremendous amount of insoluble fiber in the form of powdered cellulose, and that's why it's helping firm up the stools.

The first thing is to make sure that there is no giardia. I would ask the vet for Panacur; it's usually a 3 to 5 day treatment, and it usually knocks it out. In the meantime, I would switch her to a home cooked diet- boiled white meat chicken and mashed sweet potatoes, one third chicken to two-thirds sweet potatoes. You can add some sodium-free green canned green beans or cooked frozen lima beans to the mix, too. Give her a big heaping spoonful of plain unflavored fat free yogurt two or three times a day. And no treats, other than a piece of plain boiled chicken.

Once her stools firm up and she is off all meds, I would gradually introduce a new food, continuing to give her a high fiber source such as a couple of spoonfuls of pure canned pumpkin or mashed sweeet potatioes, and the yogurt.  As Jeanne mentioned, Honest Kicthen has worked wonders for many dogs here with digestive problems. The Preference formula must have meat added, it is just the base, but there are also formulas that are complete; Embark is a turkey based formula that many people here have used successfully with dogs who have sensitive stomachs and GI issues. Force is the chicken based formula and that's also a good one to try. It is very expensive, but it has helped a lot of dogs who didn't do well on anything else.

Your other option would be to switch her to a limited ingredient formula. Wellness's Simple Solutions line might be a good choice.  Acana's Duck with Bartlett Pear or Chicken with Burbank Potato might also work well. 

But I would absolutely not introduce a new food until she is off all meds and the stools are well-formed. When you have used the Hill's food, she has also been on meds, so you don't really know if the meds were what helped or if the high fiber content in the food was what helped. You really need to get her GI tract working on it's own without meds to see what's going on. And if she needs meds to have normal stools, obviously there is something wrong.

[Rita and Fazzy]

Great info Karen!!!  Although, I laughed out loud with the "floor sweepings" comment!!  :-)