Diarrhea

[Haley, Yeti, and Phin]

Hello! (As I write hello my auto correct is trying to change it to "Help!" Which is also extremely appropriate haha)
I was wondering if anyone with experience or knowledge could help me out with the protocal on diarrhea. I know it can be caused by a multitude of things, however what I'm fuzzy on are the exact measures to take when experiencing a bout of loose stools with your dog. I also know that diarrhea can mean some potentially serious medical issues, so it's best to have your puppy checked out the the vet if it lasts a certain amount of time. I've tried to search DK to see it there was already a similar post, which I'm sure there is, but for some reason when I search a topic I can one get a few hits to come up. I've made a list of questions I'm curious about below.
1. Is there a food I can have on hand incase of a random bout. I know pumpkin is good, and ultimately sweet potatoes and chicken is our go too if he starts having a series of loose stool. Is there anything else I can have ready for him to have? I've heard green beans are good for diarrhea. How much do you give him and are they okay to maybe give him as a snack?
2. Water. I'm terrified of a dehydrated puppy. I've been up every 2 hours tonight with Yeti being sick. I've been really encouraging him to drink water after each potty trip. Is that okay or will it upset his tummy even more? Is forcing him to drink a bad idea?n
3. How long would you wait to take your dog to the vet when it comes to diarrhea? As I stated earlier I realize it can be pretty serious, but sometimes I feel I don't let it try to "run its course." (If that's even a thing for dogs haha)
4. When dogs have diarrhea, do their tummys get upset? Is there anything I can give them to help ease the tummy ache? I feel so bad when he is having to get up throughout the night to go.
5. What little I could find in my "dehydration or diarrhea" search told me we need a high fiber food without grains. Yeti eats wellness core puppy (he is 6 1/2 months old and weighs ~30lbs). Is there a better food for him to be on? We have had him 4 1/2 months and this is our 4th (if I'm remembering right) bout of diarrhea. I feel that is probably not normal.
6. Is there anything to do at the first sign of soft stool to possibly prevent it from turning into full blown diarrhea?
7. What are signs of dehydration? I know our vet looked as his gums the last time we went in for this problem. Is there anything else I can lookout for and be aware of? I know what he eats and how much exercise he gets plays a huge factor, but is there any set amount of ounces of water he should be drinking a day? When he is sick I do mix water with his meals to make sure he's getting at least a little.

I know this is long, but I find myself completely unprepared when he gets sick and I want to be able to help/comfort him as best as I can. Thank you to anyone willing to read this long post and willing to offer advice or share their experiences!!

[33bn7f8evnuyd]

Karen, it is a joke that insurance will pay the portion they say they would cover. I rescued my dog when she was older. At age 8 my dog's pet insurance was $65 at 90% deductible and $100 co-pay.  We took her in to remove a mass in her mouth.  The total came out to be about $1000.  The 90% that was covered was "usual and customary" so, in the end, I ended up paying about $600 for that particular treatment. Most dog insurance will not pay for the cost of the vet appointment and "electives" including exam fees.

My pug had a corneal graft and after $4000, the insurance (same 90% coverage) paid maybe more like half. Most dog insurance will not pay for the cost of the vet appointment and "electives".  Let's do a bit of quick math- Say dog insurance premium cost an average of $50 a month, over a 12 year lifetime, you'd be paying $7200.  My dog lived until she was 16 years old so that would have been substantially more had I had her since she was a puppy.  I had her blood taken every year to screen out cancer.  In the end, she died from osteosarcoma (pretty aggressive cancer) in her spine. I wish we took a radiograph every year. 

Bottom line is, take care of your dogs and insurance if for those who really want a peace of mind you can opt for insurance but it will not be cheap either way if you have insurance or not.  Think of it more like financing for a peace of mind. 

Statistically, you are overpaying or else actuaries are incorrectly calculating risks. Why not set up an account for your dog at the bank that automatically transfers $50 per month? It is a win-win situation. 

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

There are many people here whose insurance did pay for the bulk (80-90%) of their dogs' catastrophic vet bills, including $20,000 chemo treatments. Don't take my word for it, do a search. Maybe they had better insurance policies than you did, I don't know. But it's not a joke. 

It's also not a joke to have to put an otherwise healthy young dog to sleep because you cannot afford to pay $3000 for surgery for an intestinal obstruction, or because you can't afford the medication they need for a perfectly treatable disease, when a $30 a month insurance premium would have made the difference between life and death for that dog. Hard enough to lose a dog to illness that can't be cured or treated, imagine losing one that could have been saved because of not having insurance. Sadly, I hear of these situations on a weekly basis, and it breaks my heart every time I do. 

"Bottom line", insurance is not just peace of mind. In many cases, some right here on DK, it has literally saved dogs' lives. 

[Haley, Yeti, and Phin]

Would yetis issues be considered a pre existing condition? We've done two fecals at the vet and had one sent out to some lab for extra testing. Regardless I agree it is so nice to have! I'm going to look into it tonight.

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

I don't think so, but I'm not sure. 

[Haley, Yeti, and Phin]

Okay! Thank you so much!

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Amen!! 

[Debbie and Toby]

Our insurance has covered the entire bill minus the copay that we chose, every time we have had a claim. The only things they do not cover are anything "seizure" related, which is considered pre-existing.  No matter how good you take care of your dog, accidents and illness happen!

[Debbie and Toby]

Haley, I do hope you find out what is causing the diarrhea and Yeti will start feeling better soon.

[Haley, Yeti, and Phin]

Thank you so so much! I am going to start looking at insurance tonight. I'm a little over whelmed but I know our DK friends will help if I need anything. Like food, there is so much to choose from it can be a bit much.

[Haley, Yeti, and Phin]

I boiled some chicken for his bland diet and have been giving him small amounts of the chicken water (broth) diluted with water. He loves this so much. I am wondering if it's too much for his upset stomach

[33bn7f8evnuyd]

I definitely sympathize with what you’re saying and that scenario is any pet owner’s worst nightmare. From my experience and the experiences of others, however, I’ve come to believe that pet insurance is not the solution it presents itself as. Many years ago, I was a pretty enthusiastic advocate in favor of getting pets insured, actually. But years of bad experiences and shared stories from others who had similarly negative experiences have soured me on the industry in a big way.

Most pets with insurance won’t ever use their insurance to cover anything major. That’s just the nature of any kind of insurance and that’s okay - we all accept that we’re paying for something we won’t use often because we want to be protected in case we end up being that one that really needs it.

If pet insurance could reliably provide that protection, I would be all in favor of it. In theory - it’s a very positive protection for the insurance owner to give them peace of mind. In practice - insurance companies can often be opaque, capricious, and outright deceptive in how they handle payments.

As a result, when they fail consumers they can actually leave them in an even WORSE financial position. Typically pet insurance works on a reimbursement model - you pay, then they pay you. When it works, cash might be a little tight for a while but things are okay in the end. When it fails, things get real ugly though. You’ve paid out cash upfront instead of setting the money aside as a rainy-day fund so there’s no emergency fund, then on top of that you still have to find the money to cover the bill from somewhere because you already paid it and were awaiting the now-denied reimbursement - otherwise that’s sitting on your credit card rolling over at an extremely unpleasant interest rate. So in that scenario (and this one is way less rare than it should be), the service that was supposed to protect you from financial problems has CREATED the same problem you were paying them to protect you from.

That behavior seems like it shouldn’t be possible, but it frequently is. The industry itself has limited oversight, with only one state explicitly regulating it:

http://www.seattletimes.com/life/pets/new-california-law-mandates-d...

Take Embrace, for example. I have personally had a very negative experience with that company. Despite the fact that they gave no indication that my dog’s condition (a possible malignant mass in her mouth that needed to be removed) was or could be considered a “pre-existing condition” and had no reason to think it was, they nonetheless denied my claim on those grounds. Since the standard cycle there was payment followed by evaluation and reimbursement, that proved to be an expensive lesson for me when I was unexpectedly stuck with the entire bill.

I’m not alone in this experience either. Many others have similar problems with Embrace (is this ratio of 1-star reviews ever a reassuring sign on other products?):

https://www.amazon.com/Embrace-Pet-Insurance/product-reviews/B001SC...

And arbitrary total denial isn’t the only area where pet insurance companies can fail their customers. After that fiasco I switched to Healthy Paws. Insurance companies can also bring up something that so many of us with human insurance would recognize: the idea of “standard and customary” treatment.

Has anyone ever gotten hit with that one before? I have, both for myself and my dog (lucky me?). In this case, the charge was accepted but they decided that the vet had tried unapproved diagnostic treatments that would not be covered. So once again, I was stuck with a vastly larger than expected medical bill that I had already paid while expecting reimbursement.

Fortunately I had money set aside each time to cover the expense, but I’m a little past “once burned, twice shy” at this point. While pet insurance policies have theoretical value, in practice you’re at the mercy of a company that, at the end of the day, makes money by not paying you. Buying pet insurance is a calculated gamble: you’re paying and praying that you’ll be one of the customers they don’t decide to screw. I’ve found that there is much greater financial safety by saving that same money yourself each month. If the very worst comes to pass it’s going to be difficult, but not as difficult as it would be if that money had already gone out the door to an insurer.

And actually, I’ll definitely grant you that in some cases, insurance DOES end up being in the owner’s best interest. As you mentioned above, if a dog ends up with a chronic health condition from a young age that leads to high ongoing expenses, that will definitely be a situation where the owner wins, with the caveat that:

1. such patients are a burden on an insurance company’s bottom line, and they will actively search for a technicality to disqualify you

2. the aforementioned payment concerns above mean that there’s a chance they won’t pay in the first place when called upon to do so.

But again, I feel like that’s basically a gamble - a gamble that if bad luck strikes, it won’t strike from your insurer.

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Chen, I am not a fan of insurance companies. I am well aware that they are in business to make a profit, and that they do that by trying to pay the least amount of money and take in the greatest amount. 

But insurance is a necessary evil. We have it on our homes, our cars, our lives, because the risk of not having it should a catastrophe occur is too great to chance. Benefit versus risk. We use that equation every day, in making life decisions. 

In the case of pet insurance, your pet's life is on the line. That's a pretty big gamble. It's not like buying a lottery ticket or playing a slot machine, where you might lose some money. This gamble might result in your pet losing his life for no reason other than that his owner made a bad bet.

47% of Americans would have trouble paying an unexpected $400 expense. That's a fact. Half of all Americans could not come up with $2000 unless they sold something. That's a fact. Google it. People are NOT saving. 

http://business.time.com/2011/06/01/nearly-half-of-americans-would-...

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/my-secret-shame...

It's a nice idea to put money away in the bank in case your dog has an unexpected emergency, but let's look at the numbers. 

In the 10 month period between November 2011 and September 2012, Jack's vet bills ran over $8000.  In order for someone to save that much money in 10 months, they would have to be puting away $800 per month. This may be something that would be easy for you, but I can assure you that it isn't possible for the vast majority of pet owners. We won't even think about the fact that for those whose pets' chemo has run $20,000 in 2 months, the savings would have to be $10,000 month. 

Now I don;t have pet insurance. I'm 64 years old and I do have savings, and I am able to tap my retirement account without penalty. But everyone here can't do that. I couldn't have done it either when I was a young mother with a growing family like so many here. And if I were in that position, I'd get insurance, and I wouldn't really care if the insurance company is cheating, lying, stealing, screwing me and not even buying me dinner, lol, because Jack is more important to me than money and his life is worth everything. I would be willing to bet that most of us here feel the same way. 

Near the beginning of this discussion, Haley commented about it being difficult for her to have to keep paying $300 vet bills every month. That's why I suggested pet insurance. Plain and simple.