This is my little girl Aurora, she is the runt of the litter, but the one with the most spunk, and the only surviving chocolate of her litter. She is also the oddest puppy I have ever seen or heard of out of the family and were dog people, uncle trains state champion hunting dogs, sister was a dog groomer, and I have helped raise multiple dogs so I'm not really a rookie. So background on her, her dad is a golden lab that the girlfriend's parents own, and the mom is a black female that they do not own, but they breed the two with, pure bred and they seemed to feed the pupies with decent quality food (iams and Purina). The breeders however I don't think have been doing this more than 3-4 litters (I honestly think this is their 2nd or third) because some of the stuff they say or do isn't really up to par, for ex: having a special area inside where the puppies were kept that really wasn't separated that they tried to teach them to go potty in... I honestly blame the extremely difficult time we have had trying to house break her on that since she was literally taught "its good to pee/poo where you live" for the first 8 weeks... I mean it was basically like a litter box with almost no separation inside of the 6 foot by 6 foot area they lived in. ---Short version--- puppy pukes hair ball, yellow foam/bile, poops/pees inside house (almost 13 weeks now) non-consistent stool, will sit peeing, lay peeing and then lay in it, will go on 18-30 hour sleep binges, gets sick and wont eat, and the list goes on... Saw 2 vets and they both don't have a clue... Can't get her to potty train... Fed only wellness Complete health and Wellness Core food Given Britta water or Nestle Pure-life Bottled Water (no tap water at all except in the form of ice. All Stuffed animals or ropes get washed in the washing machine regularly (1-2 weeks or when she gets liquid poop) Wash her stainless steel bowls in dish washer every 2-3 days to sanitize... Can someone please help does anyone have any ideas? ---Long version--- Week 1 (9 weeks old) We get her and she pees inside the house constantly with no warning. I begin the switch from purina soft food that is mixed with iams hard food (always puppy food through this entire post btw, so just assume from here on out puppy food) to Wellness Puppy Complete Health mixed with Wellness Core at a ratio of 2:1 but following instructions for how much to feed on the bag. All of our treats are Wellness proteen bars or mother hubbard bisuts, with the exception of ocasionally we give her part of a "Canine Carry Outs" T-bone looking treat. Week 2 after 3-4 days of being on wellness constantly, we are having trouble with her stool being liquid at the end and later being all liquid. My girlfriend is a PA an din nursing school decides the cause is that she doesn have enough good bacteria in her system, so she suggests giving her some yogurt. 2 days later her stool goes back to normal. Week 3 (11 weeks) Aurora still not gettin that inside is not a potty... so we try to bell train her with no success... Saturday I start her on a 3 day De-wormer as suggested on the box and I had read online. Week 4 Aurora seems fine (still potty issues tho)until Monday, when she pukes up a hair ball looking thing... that is about 3/4 the size of a golf ball... Tuesday she pukes up Yellow Foam (im assuming Bile) Then Wednesday she doesn't eat much (1/2 of what we were giving her) and sleeps the majority of the day. Thursday she sleeps all day, literally almost 24 hours straight with us having to pick her up and carry her outside because we cant get her to walk or eat, so Friday afternoon we take her to petsmart since ours has a vet in it and I had a coupon for a free checkup with my puppy kit. The Vet determines that the is "7% dehydrated", tests her for parvo, does a poop smear, and tries to get us to do blood work... The bill gets to roughly 120$ by that point (after using the coupon to save about 100$ for the checkup) and this vet does not seem very confident so we decline to continue any more testing. That is when she tells us that we will need to pay to have them put some kind of gel re-hydration shot things in her that will re-hydrate her and that we do not have a choice in the matter... So the bill hits roughly 180$ after a 100$ coupon and this girl hasn't the slightest clue whats going on... Had I know she was de-hydrated, i would have fed her ice cubes... no matter the situation she will always eat ice, she loves it more than treats... These shots were 100% unnecessary.. The thing that really pisses me off is that the entire time these two dim-wits treated me like i freaking abuse my baby... despite me bringing all her food, her shampoo, treats, de-wormer, the scale i used to measure it that is 100 times more sensitive than the meds needed in order to be properly dispensed, and having her in a harness w/ a puppy coat on... You can tell by looking at her that she is pampered more than 90 % of all dogs out there and these dim-wits have the gull to treat me like im Michael Vick when i take better care of her than my girlfriend does... not that she is bad, we both on a daily basis give the 20-30 kisses and always accommodate her as best we can, but it is just the gull of these two (vet and her assistant). We left with no anti-virals or anti-biotics... I was not impressed... Week 5 We take aurora to a real vet office on tuesday where they give her her 12 week shots since seems like she has fully recovered from her sick episode. She is a bit sluggish that day and sleepy but no problems beyond that. She is still not potty trained... peeing in the house... peeing in her kennel pooping in it also and she will literally be taken outside where she will pee... then 10-20 minutes after being taken out pee inside the house... Thursday she starts acting a little weird peeing inside the house while laying down once and sleeping more than she should be. Yesterday I get off work, get her out, feed her, and shortly after, she pees sitting up on herself slightly, but i catch her and move her so she doesn't get soaked in it, then let her out again. Then I go to staples where i meet someone who is asking the managers about routers and I am a staples person and I also purchase a lot of stuff from there so I know all the managers and they know me so they tell him to talk to me since I am a network engineer/ IT Technician. So in essence a 30-45 minute trip turns into 2 hours and a new client. I come home and let her out to pee, and she lays down in the coffee table and sleeps while I make dinner... about an hour or so later, she gets up covered in pee.. She peed in the coffee table and laid in it... so I give her a bath after I take her out... again... sigh... I scrub her down in the tub, then i rinse her and put dog conditioner on her, rinse her again, let her out and dry her off, then take a shower myself... I put her in clothes basket so she cant escape where in the 5-10 min it takes to get her harness lead, my coat and shoes, she bees in the clothes basket all over herself... Sigh... so I take her out to pee... then take her inside and rinse her off in the tub... again... and then put conditioner on her again.. then put her in her kennel where 30-60 min later she liquid poo bombs her bed... I should also note she has slepy 90% of the day and did not want to play much at all.. I have a really hard time getting her to wake up so I think she is having a sick episode again... I am honestly out of ideas... I only give her Britta water or Nestle Pure-life Bottled Water (no tap water at all except in the form of ice cubes when given to her). All Stuffed animals or ropes get washed in the washing machine regularly which is about every 1-2 weeks or when she gets liquid poop I will do them just to be safe. I also wash her stainless steel bowls in dish washer every 2-3 days to sanitize them or more often when we use enough dishes to run a load... I don't even raise my voice when she pottys inside the house or spank her.. im just over it... the entire apartment smells like pee if you sit on the carpet pretty much... I honestly don't know what to do... I have tried everything I can... vets give me pamphlets of crap I have tried and cant explain why she sleeps so much randomly or acts so weird/gets sick... Does anyone have any ideas? Please someone come up with something... Im losing my mind... its 4:41 am and she has liquid pooped in her kennel twice now once at 3am and once just now 4:30am... I cant keep this up or I'm gunna go mad...
To me she sounds ill and I would go to your vet. In the UK people usually have a regular vet who would see the puppy several times during the first 6 months and who would prescribe wormer, vaccines etc as well as weigh the pup and give advice.
I was just at the vet 4 days ago (tuesday) that will be her permanent vet unless I find a reason to change vets in the future. I also went to vet in petsmart last week thursday, neither had any idea what was going on with her... Today is Saturday, so i dont want to gun unless I absolutely have to since weekends cost a lot of $ and generally the only people around on a weekend are new employees, so I really don't want another giant bill.
Hi there, I am sorry you are having such a difficult time of it, but your puppy is clearly not well, and it is unlikely that you are going to get to the bottom of the problem without letting a vet carry out a full investigation of your pup. This will probably be expensive As you have rightly concluded, this is not normal Nor is this. None of this is likely to be because your puppy was raised in a deep litter box for eight weeks, unless it was not cleaned out daily and the puppies were unable to keep clean. It could be a physical problem or a behavioral one, but only a qualified professional with access to your dog will be able to find out. The situation must be very stressful for you, I do hope you are able to work with your vet to figure out what is wrong. And if you are not confident in your vet, it might be a good idea to get a second opinion. I hope you make some progress soon
Poor little puppy girl, and you. I'm sorry she is not feeling well but I agree, it sounds like there may be multiple things going on and she needs consistent monitoring with a good Vet. It does sound like a different Vet might help. Did any of them collect urine or take a faecal sample for analysis? Can you ask dog owning friends and neighbours about their Vet? ARe they happy with their Vet? What does this mean, the first two Vets had not graduated? Puppies and dogs don't vomit hairballs like cats do. Dogs don't groom themselves like cats do. So where is the hair coming from? A sample of vomit to the Vet would probably help them too. Did you take out puppy insurance? Most breeders I know of send you home with a puppy package that includes a couple of weeks of puppy insurance. Because, unfortunately, I can't see any followup being cheap. Good luck, hope you can get to the bottom of these problems and get Aurora healthy.
Aurora is a lovely name and she looks real cute. Clearly things are not right though - you are obviously really worried. Improper worming schedules could cause poop problems, as can feeding issues, urine infections can cause peeing problems. Bottom line, your pup sounds ill. No one here can tell you what is wrong. You have to seek advice from a vet who can properly examine and test. I think you need your vet. Sorry you are having these problems. I hope things look up for you soon.
So very sorry to hear how much trouble you and your wee girl are having. I've no advice to offer - there are lots of real experts on this forum and they will give you great advice! - but just wanted to say hello and welcome and good luck.
My Archie had tummy issues when we first brought him (liquid, bloody poop that was ultimately attributed to a change in the puppy food formula) home and we put him on boiled chicken and rice for several days (which worked wonders) and then reintroduced puppy food. That didn't go well, and so we had him on Science Diet I/D, which you can only get from a vet. Within 2 days, he had normal stool. We kept him on it for 2 weeks and then reintroduced a new puppy food over the next 2 weeks...really slowly. He is now fine. I am sorry I don't have anything to add about the other things. Good luck...my heart goes out to you.
This really sounds like your're having a hard time with little Aurora! Obviously this kind of behaviour is not normal for a puppy and points at some kind of illness. Maybe go for the boiled chicken and rice as Archie's mom suggested for a few days and see if there is any change in her behaviour and droppings? Maybe it's some kind of allergic reaction to something in the food you are giving her(this doesn't mean your feeding bad food but she might just react to one of the ingredients). The hairball vomiting sounds really odd to me. Did she eat parts of a toy maybe?(rope? towels? a shredded sock?) Did you check if you got any poisionous plants in your home she could have or nibbles at? All in all i strongly recomend a full investigation of your puppy by a good vet(blood, stool etc samples and so on). I doubt this will be cheap but if you want to get things sorted i guess you'll have to bite the bullet. Good luck to you and your little girl. Keep us updated on how things are progressing!
Is there an update? Is Aurora ok? Some Vets will let you establish a credit plan and are quite aware a big bill at one time is hard for many owners to handle.
Thank you guys for all the suggestions. 5 different vet doctors and 2 different vets later I figured out what was going on... She has a grain allergy... I thought about it and thought about it for about a week and figured that the most solid poo she ever had was when I had mixed grain free food with the wellness compete. Even though we were giving her the Wellness Complete which is lower on the grain side, it still must have had enough grain in it to make her sick. My girlfriend and I actually got in a huge fight about changing her food, she wanted to go to IAM's and I wanted to go to Grain free. Looking back on it, I cant imagine what would have happened if I let her do that. I find it a little crazy that the grain free food was the fix, because the vet said they didn't think it was a grain allergy and the people at petsmart advised me not to switch her to grain free food. They said that it would only make the situation worse because a grain allergy cant cause diarrhea, food being too rich for the dog is the only thing that would cause it. I switched her over to Blue Buffalo Wilderness Large Breed Puppy food (Chicken), and her poop hardened up about a week into the transition. She also started to gain weight. Before she was beginning to look like one of the dogs from those ASPCA commercials where the owner had starved them... You could literally see her ribs defined before and after she ate and the amount of fat on her ribs was maybe a couple millimeters thick. Now she actually has about 1 inch of fat on the bottom of her ribs(approximated from feeling her ribs near between her two front legs). She swung up about 11 pounds in about a 8 days into the transition of the food and she became much more active. I recently scaled back her food from 1 cup and a half a feed to 1 cup and 1/4 because the amount of fat there concerns me a little haha I believe it is at the tipping point where if I don't scale her food back a little, she will start to go over weight and I really don't want that to happen. My experience has been that it is much more difficult to make a dog lose weight than it is to maintain it and if you keep an eye on their ribs, or rather feel their ribs 1-4 inches back from their front legs, you will know when they are taking in too many calories in over time. It is just something I noticed with our other dogs I have had over the years from petting them between weigh in's at the vet. ----- Everything seemed to get better after the switch, so I am not really sure if it was the fact she didn't feel well or a combination of that and her acting out to say something is just not right. But I will stick to my guns and say having puppies pee in the same space they live in is never a good for potty training, but that is more of just a personal belief than anything and may not matter. ----- By real vet I mean one that was not located inside a pet store and has an established practice that stands on it's profits and reputation. All of the vets she saw were graduated, but I just don't feel like a vet belongs in a pet store big or small. I am getting a little irritated that all of the vets around here seem to be at most late twenty's in age... I prefer a vet that has been out of school for about 10 years that way they have updated book smarts, but have a good amount of experience in the field. But again... personal belief, take it with a grain of salt. no insurance.. these breeders weren't experienced at all. She was litter 2 of what I think may be 2 total. She has good genes though, at least on the papa side. ----- Thank you for this suggestion, we did give her chicken and rice for a little while but only as kind of a supplement when it was at its worst and it did help a little with her appetite and energy, so thank you for this suggestion. I just didn't want to do it too much because I am a hard arse on the no people food for puppys thing haha. ----- I am not sure where the hairball came from. She ripped open one of her stuffed toys around that time but it didn't seem like she got much out of it. My girlfriend's sister has a sheltie that she plays with... only when they play without toys, aurora will bite and pull out the fur around his neck... It is crazy haha, I have never seen a dog do that, and the sheltie doesn't even yelp or anything... He just lets her do it... But he is a friggin odd ball... I have never seen a more feminine male in my life, but maybe it has something to do with the breed? My experience lies with German Shorthaired pointers, Labs, Huskies, and Border Terriers... I'll post a picture of her in a bit when she stops being such a pouty butt. Sorry this update is so late. I would check in every once in a while over the first 5-6 weeks after posting this and read through, but I own a small business, well more like 2 businesses (one is IT based, and the other is where I sell gift cards to places like Raise.com or saveya.com in bulk which has been a really neat experience that I hope to maintain.) both basically took off like sheer crazyness...
Really glad to hear that things have improved a lot. You must be very relieved Well done on finding the solution.
Yea... very much so, a sick puppy really drags the morale down haha. Coming home to that poop smell and having carpet that smelled like pee when you sat down on it was driving me nuts... Now hopefully she catches up growth wise, but I have a feeling she is going to be stunted because we didn't fix this soon enough. She is just so short...
Glad she is getting better. Be aware that being the runt of the litter is no predictor of the pups final size. Cooper was the runt 5.5 lbs @ 7 weeks. She is 24" and over 80# now. FWIW, She is also on Blue Buffalo Wilderness Puppy (grain free) Our vets don't think grain is usually a problem, but you may have proved it is in Aurora's case. While you don't want your pup overweight, it is not hard to get a dog to loose weight, since you get to control what they eat. We slimmed our older lab down about 5# over about 6 months. Could have done faster if we needed to.
Grain can be a problem. My girl was really poorly for about 4/5 months when we got her. She had on and off with bloody diorrhea etc. After lots of vet visits, test etc we found out she has a wheat allergy. We feed her on a BARF diet now which has really benefitted her. Anytime she has an unsettled tummy (usually if someone gives her a treat without me knowing!), I will give her chicken and rice or scrambled egg for a few days and thus usually sorts it out.
