An update on Woody & possible long term effects of metronidazole

[Jill, Woody & Maxi]

I am one of the many owners whose puppy (now 3 years old!) came home from the breeder at 8 weeks with loose stools, diarrhea, pudding poop, whichever you would like to call it.  After weeks of negative fecals, we finally received a positive fecal for giardia.  Our first vet prescribed a course of metro, which temporarily cleared it up, then, back again to diarrhea. Course after course of metro, hills I/D food, a prescription of clay (what was I thinking?!?!) 2 vet changes, more metro, (finally) Panacur..and then my breeder told me about Doodlekisses.  By this point, Woody was 5 months old, so this treatment has been going on for 3 months, with no resolve.  To make a long story short, after DK, and the help of Karen and friends I learned about the importance of a quality dog food, and the importance of treatment for giardia.  Throughout those 3 months, never once did I (or was I told by a vet) to give a probiotic..so Woody had 3 months of metro kill the bad bacteria in Woodys intestines…along with the good bacteria.  We tried all quality foods, and nothing would work..until The Honest Kitchen, Embark..and even then things still weren't perfect…we were finding pieces of undigested food in his stools.  After a bout of acute pancreatitis (from adding ground lean turkey to his Embark) We finally decided we need to take this further than our regular vet.  

We made an appointment at Cornell University Animal Hospital, where we found out Woody has an inflammatory bowel condition of his digestive tract that was causing diarrhea and preventing complete digestion of his food. In inflammatory bowel disease, the body's immune system attacks either proteins from the diet or self antigens or normal bacterial flora in the GI tract. The bowel wall becomes inflitrated with inflammatory cells and the result is destruction of villi and thickening of the bowel wall. This prevents normal uptake and digestion of food and leads often to diarrhea and weight loss. 

Inflammatory bowel disease can be grouped into three catagories: food responsive, antibiotic responsive, and steroid responsive. We are lucky enough, that Woody has fallen into the category of food responsive.  We have been home cooking for him full-time for well over a year now. I have a system where I buy in bulk, take one 4 hour period out of one day of the week, and prepare about 7-10 days worth of food, which I freeze, then take out during the week.  It is simple, now that I have a system.  This will now be a life long commitment, which I am more than happy to do..being that he is responding so well to it (we just had our follow up appointment, and all of his labs came back great!)

My point of this discussion is that you have to be your own advocate.  If I had the knowledge that I learned here on DK…who knows? Maybe this could have all been avoided.  Please, don't ever let your vet give you medicine without a good reason, and KNOW the side effects, and what you can do to avoid them..in the case of Woody, maybe taking a probiotic from the beginning would've helped?

So a BIG THANK YOU to all that have helped along the way..and please, if anyone has any questions, feel free to ask!

[Dolly Dykhouse]

Ahh Karen, this is exactly why I ask here before I DO anything. Thanks for the advice on using Prozyme for Henry! I thought it sounded along the lines of too good to be true because I couldn't find anything here on DK about it and the use for Giardia.

[Tiffani Van Horn]

Ok so now I am going to research Giardia.  Reading your post, sounds like my life.  All his stool samples have been negative as well.  But no sooner do we think we have it under control, we are back to my poor baby having diarrhea. 

What do you feed you baby now?

[Dolly Dykhouse]

Tiffani what type of fecal testing are they doing? Giardia only shows up in a fecal floatation test not the ELISA test most vet/labs do. My vet has it listed as "parasite and ova flotation test" under their billing code. The ELISA test is good for showing  wide range of parasites; however, Henry's came back negative for all parasites and it was WRONG! I knew by reading everyone's comments here on DK that he more than likely had Giardia (the nail in the coffin was the dark yellow/gold stools that smelled horrible) Karen told me to insist on a fecal floatation and request Panacur. I brought in a stool sample that had portions from two different BM's as the cysts are not always shed in each stool.The second test came back loaded with Giardia cysts! After a 5 day run of Panacur and a 10 day wait we retested, still high cyst count so we were back on Panacur for 10 days this time. On his fourth fecal test she ran both the ELISA and a fecal float; no more Giardia cysts but the ELISA showed he had Coccidia which had probably been there all along too! Gah! It has been 10 weeks of treating, bleaching, cleaning, wiping, etc and it looks like we are in the clear. Vet wants to do another fecal test next month to make sure everything is gone. Thank goodness for our upper 90's weather as it helps kill off Giardia cysts that are exposed to the higher temps.

Do not be surprised if stools do not become completely normal right away even after treatment. Henry is a pooping machine each time and the first stool is perfect, the second sometimes looks like soft serve, not the runs or pudding but not as firm as it should be. I can't recommend strongly enough the need to keep on a good probiotic like Proviable DC and add a teaspoon of plain yogurt to each meal and some sweet potato for fiber. It will take some time to get their GI tract to optimum health so keep up with it even after the parasites are gone. It is a lot of extra work, I still spray bleach after immediatly picking up his poop 3 weeks after the all clear call from the vet. Might be a bit of overkill at this point but for any owner that has been through Giardia/Coccidia the stress of worry and watching their puppies go through it are worth a little extra due diligence.

[Tammy M. Jacomin]

Hi  It may be posted here somewhere, but can you share with me what Woody's diet consists of?  What are you preparing for his meals?  Thanks!

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Hi Tammy, Jill hasn't been active here on DK for some time, and she may not see this. 

But I will tell you that for any dog with serious digestive issues, what works for one may not work for another. The homemade diets really need to be customized to the individual dog. A lot of it has to do with which particular proteins the dog may or may not have eaten in the past.

Your best bet for a homemade diet is to get a recipe from a canine nutritionist, or an internal medicine specialist with a lot of IBD experience.