Those who have delt with Giardia in the past

[Lindsey & Cocoa]

A little history.  I got Cocoa 5 weeks ago at 8 weeks of age. Her poo was runny but I figured it was just puppy stuff and stress from a new home. On day 3 her poo was just straight water and started having blood in it. So off to the vet we went, they ran fecal tests and everything came back negative. They ended up putting her on Metrodozonale for 5 days and canned script food. She seemed to clear up a little on the meds and food, her poo started to look like soft searve ice cream. So now we are about the 2 week mark and I have been E-mailing the breeder the whole time with no answer. I finally call the breeder and to my suprize she finally responds.... she admits another puppy in the litter has been confirmed positive for Giardia and that I should let my vet know to start treating her for this. This info might have been nice $160.00 ago!

So I contact the vet and they put her on 5 days of Panacur (breeder told me that is not long enough and Metrodozonale is a better treatment, she is also a vet tech). So I call the vet and they have me do Panacur for 5 days and 10 days of Metrodozonal.  During the next 2 weeks her poo has been like pudding every so many poops might get to soft serve looking. She was due for her 12 week puppy shots and I was on vacation with my daughter and parents so my husband took her. He let the vet know that her poo is still not normal and still has that horrible stink to it and she has some nasty gas. The vet wants us to wait 3 more weeks and do a fecal test. She said that sometimes this can take a couple weeks after the meds for it to clear everything out and her poo to get back to normal.

She then asked that we contact the breeder to see if she knows the adverage size of the litter mates because she wants to make sure her growth is not effected by this and started talking steriod shots.

 

So what I was wondering how did your vet treat this and how long did it take to see improvement?

My neighbor said one of her dogs had this as a puppy and it took over 6 months and several rounds of meds to finally clear it up. She also said that now he has IBS from it and she has gone through so many food types but he will have runny poo still very often and he is 5 years old.

 

 

It is impossible to pick up the poo in the yard when its so runny all it does is just smear in the grass. I am trying to hose it down on the days the sun comes out and thaws out the hose. Good thing is she has not pooped in the house in 3 weeks. But im getting sick of washing her feet from stepping in her own poop. When she poops she walks instead of staying in one spot so each poop gets spread out.

[Diane and Alma]

When Alma is sick (and yes she has had giardia) I buy boneless chicken breasts.  I put them in a glass pyrex dish in the oven at 350 for 30 minutes.  You can make up the entire batch at once.  Cube them up and put them in her dish.  Any leftovers can go in the fridge or freezer for later.  I also cook up a big batch of Japanese rice.  I have a rice cooker.  But I'm sure any type of rice would work.  Again any leftovers can be put in the fridge.  Ask your vet how much and how often you should feed her.  Alma is almost 3 so I give her 1/2 cup rice and 1/2+ cup chicken twice a day.  I slowly reintroduce her kibble when she is better.  Oh, and I usually reheat the rice and chicken for a few minutes before I feed her.  I just think cold rice and chicken sounds yuck. 

 

[Willow and J]

I am so sorry to hear that all of these had to happen at once. 

Others have much more experience with Giardia, so I don't think I can add much more to it. Willow had it once on a yearly check up (we didn't know, no symptoms), then was cured with a round of medication (Metro, 10 days). Her stool was same all throughout, before and after. 

One thing I wanted to say is that when Willow was having sensitive puppy stomach, rice and chicken didn't stop the runny stool immediately. (It didn't make it worse either.) We tried canned pumpkin too, but our best help was dried sweet potato (Front Porch pets), and we gave her two a day between her meals. So we stuck with her usual dry dog food and sweet potatoes even when her stool got softer from time to time. Her stool was rarely firm until she stopped growing around 15 months, but changing her food made it only worse.  

We were also told Orijen is not always the best for sensitive stomach since it's harder to digest, but after trying Wellness, Artemis, and Holistic Select over the course of a year (and yes, changing puppy food every 2-3 months wasn't so smart even with gradual transitioning) Orijen puppy formula was the best - Willow didn't have problem transitioning to it, and she got shinier coat on top of stable digestive system (not firm but "pick-up-able" as my DH says). Now she's on The Taste of the Wild, and we discontinued sweet potato about a month ago as an experiment (and she's doing fine!) after feeding boxes and boxes of dried sweet potatoes for over a year.

Best wishes for both you and Cocoa. Get well soon, sweet Cocoa! 

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

The grain-free foods have helped many people with this problem. It just takes a little patience, as you found out.

[Kaytlin and Cooper]

I wouldnt take her for walks for fear that she would poop somewhere you cant clean and infect other dogs

[Jane, Rooney & Stuart]

You need my non - patented Giardia poop catcher - lol.  Do NOT let the poop get on your grass.  When she stops to poop take a paper plate (I cut mine to fit better under the back legs) and catch the poop.  Yes your neighbors will think you have gone crazy but it will save you from reinfection down the road.  Stuart, my rescue had Giardia and Coccidia but then he came from a puppy mill.  What is with the rash of breeders sending home sick puppies?  I do not( in my humble opinion) believe that any reputable breeder sends home a sick puppy and yes they had to know - the poop was already runny at their house, guessing that they didn't want to screw up a sale or pay to treat it themselves.  I'd be demanding some money returned for the cost of treatment or I'd put their name on the intra-net for all to see.  Best of luck.

[Lindsey & Cocoa]

Yes I am very upset with this breeder. I thought I did my home work and we even tried a older dog last fall that did not work out and she was so wonderful about it I never thought this would happen.  I can not get her to return phone calls or Emails.

Now my vet thinks its not Giardia and something kind of intestinal problem she may have been born with.

She is only 13 weeks old and eating 3 cups of food a day and still wanting more and that worries the vet.

[Lindsey & Cocoa]

ok you guys are really going to think I am horrible.

My vet called me tonight and she is thinking we are not dealing with Giardia. She thinks with all these meds we should have seen some improvement and if she was reinfected then back bad again but since I have not once seen a normal poop since I have owned the dog something else is going on. Plus her fecal test was negative but she did say you can get a lot of faulse positives thats why she went ahead and treated her for that. She wants me to go on the RX food again (I know, I know you guys say big big no no, but I dont know what else to do).  If they find this to be something the dog might have been born with I can get the Breeder to pay but if I dont follow my Vet orders they might not write the letter for me that is required.

So we are going to try it for 2 weeks. And at that 2 week point she wants to do a fecal test.  I asked if I could just do rice and chicken and she said she is worried about not enough of something in it (she called while i was out to dinner with my inlaws so it was hard to hear). I also asked about pumpkin and she said NO it can be a lacitive in some dogs and we could make things worse. I also asked about Yogurt and she said no to that because she doesnt want to give her dairy and add something else to her diet.

So if this does not clear up on the RX food she is talking steriods (but needs me to find out from the breeder if the other dogs are about the same weight but the breeder wont return my calls). She is also talking testing for I thought she said pancerase problems?? but I could be wrong said the test would run about $300.00. So she wants to clear out food issues first.  I just hate to be stuck with expensive food for the rest of the dogs like.... my husband said he saw bags of food at the pet store that are bland foods for about the cost of what we are feeding now.

 

You guys all gave me great suggestions and I am going to keep treating the yard and stuff as if its Giardia just in case but I hate to not follow my vets orders and then have an emergency and them not treat me as well as they might have because of this. Or even not back me when it comes to getting the breeder to pay for vet bills. They were great with my old dog and even saw him on a emergency for free one time.

 

I hate talking to people in person or on the phone with everything was Email because she told me all kinds of stuff and I forgot half of what she was saying.

[Heather & Jake]

Your story is pretty much identical to Jake's. Please please please don't do the vet food then steroids, there are other options!  With the food it will just seem like everything is all fixed because of all the junk in it your pup won't be able to really digest it will just firm them up and make the poops yellow and crumbly... believe me I've been there and thought it was a cure.  Here are our old posts if you'd like to read rather than me spewing out a page long story here...

http://www.doodlekisses.com/group/thefoodgroup/forum/topics/another...

http://www.doodlekisses.com/group/thefoodgroup/forum/topics/how-soo...

http://www.doodlekisses.com/group/thefoodgroup/forum/topics/still-n...

Jake was treated many times for the Giardia he came home with. I'm not sure if his current GI issues are caused from all the meds he was on as a puppy but I didn't solve his loose stool issues until he was about 10 months old and I'm convinced it stunted his growth as well so I know your pain.  It's a good thing your vet recognized this early, mine didn't. For us the only thing that started to work (as it has done for many other doodles here) is the Honest Kitchen food which is expensive, but even that stopped working for Jake over time....

If you read through all my old posts and the responses it kinda outlines the months of testing and food tests we did till where we are today with most of the time nice firm reliable stools every day.  I hope our experience will help you figure this out sooner than we did!

[Lindsey & Cocoa]

Thanks I will read your posts.   The thing is she tested Negative for Giardia but since one of the litter mates had it I talked the vet into treating her for it.  The vet wanted to start testing for other problems but I figured it must be Giardia since a litter mate had it. So we tried a couple rounds of meds and her stool never got any better.   Right now the vet is worried because of the amount of food she is eating and she thinkgs her weight should be more so her goal right now is just to firm her poop up and then do testing (I think).   Im starting to get confused.

She wants me to do 2 weeks of the RX ID food and re test her stool (right now its so runny I can not even gather a stool sample). She said she just wants to see if this food clears up her stool or not or if the test comes back positive and then we can go from there.  If she says she needs science diet the rest of her life I am not going to go for that I will go to the food group and ask what I can feed that will do the same thing and not cost $100 a month to feed.

I just dont know what to do but to follow the vets orders I have already chaged her food once and hate to keep doing that.

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

I'm not telling you not to follow the vet's instructions, but I hope you will ask him/her one question: How can a food clear up a parasite or disease? There is no medicine in the ID food, nothing of any therapeutic value. Here are the ingredients:

Whole Grain Corn, Brewers Rice, Dried Egg Product, Chicken By-Product Meal, Corn Gluten Meal, Pork Fat (preserved with mixed tocopherols and citric acid), Powdered Cellulose, Lactic Acid, Dicalcium Phosphate, Chicken Liver Flavor, Iodized Salt, Potassium Citrate, Choline Chloride, Calcium Carbonate, Potassium Chloride, Dried Beet Pulp, Soybean Oil, Vitamin E Supplement, vitamins (L-Ascorbyl-2-Polyphosphate (source of vitamin C), Vitamin E Supplement, Niacin, Thiamine Mononitrate, Vitamin A Supplement, Calcium Pantothenate, Biotin, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Riboflavin, Folic Acid, Vitamin D3 Supplement), minerals (Ferrous Sulfate, Zinc Oxide, Copper Sulfate, Manganous Oxide, Calcium Iodate, Sodium Selenite), Taurine, preserved with Mixed Tocopherols & Citric Acid, Phosphoric Acid, Beta-carotene, Rosemary Extract.

 

How can corn, chicken by-products, pork fat, egg "products", and brewer's rice (which is floor sweepings from breweries) cure anything?? That's all that is in this food. Everything after the bold type section is flavoring, fiber, vitamins and minerals. Oh, and a tiny bit of rosemary.

Every other dog food on the market has vitamins and minerals, and most of them have much better ingredients than this. If you need a limited ingredient food, which would make sense, there are many others that contain actual chicken instead of by-products, and better, more wholesome grains than corn. It just makes my blood boil that people have to pay such a high price for absolute garbage like this.

Surely a simple question of how these ingredients can help anything would be in order. That's all. Just ask what about this food would help.

[Lindsey & Cocoa]

I know I keep asking myself why are we just doing a bandaid solution. But the way she explaned it to me she no longer thinks its a parasite problem because her fecal tests are negative and her stool has never gotten better even on the meds.  so she wants me to try this for a few weeks to just see if we can even get firm stool if not she wants to start testing for intestinal problems or at that point we know she will need a food for sensitive tummys.

I am to feed this until March 10th and do one more fecal test just in case we missed a cycle of a parasite and at that point we will looking into food problems or intestinal issues.

[Heather & Jake]

Okay, I understand that completely. Would you be switching to only the Rx or mixing that into her existing kibble? I'm sure it will firm it up because all of the fillers in it so you can retest. If your vet wants to figure out if this is a food thing first before trying other tests, it can take months to figure out what your pup can actually tolerate, one food is not a cure for all dogs they are all different.  Keep in mind that over feeding can also cause loose stools.

Now when talking about her size and getting that up, is Cocoa underweight for her size and very bony or is she just smaller than what you would expect? Jake was both and not absorbing all the nutrients in his food because it was just passing through him so quickly.  Over processed foods take longer to digest.  I may be wrong here but I think something easier to digest (like the chicken breast) on top of the kibble would help her put on more weight than possibly a food she cant properly digest but would firm up the stool just because of all the junk.

I do agree with other posters that maybe picking up some probiotics like Gentle Digest may help her get some good flora back in her system after the meds.  Your vet is right that pumpkin and yogurt don't work for all dogs, plus the probiotics are better than yogurt anyways.