Hi All.... New to the board. Looking for a few thoughts/suggestions. My 12yo Black Lab (Tressel) is going on 3 weeks now with diarrhea. The very first night, we came home from dinner and she had gone in every single room in our house, it was a disaster. You could tell she was very upset and was not feeling well. She wasn't eating much and this continued for a couple of days. I've had her to our vet 3 times.....3 rounds of meds (lomotil, endosorb and an antibiotic (Metro) + 2 shots of an antidiarrheal). All labs came back normal, no giardia or parasites...a couple of elevated liver numbers, but he wasn't concerned at all. The third visit he put her on a bag of Royal Canin Gastro dry with a few cans of wet as well to mix in. She's still having diarrhea...ugh! She seems to be completely fine....eating very well, drinking a lot of water, still has plenty of energy (for a 12yo), etc... She hasn't gone in the house again, but she has gone on our porch a few times. You can tell when she needs to go because she pants and will ask to go outside. It scares her when it comes out because it's pretty forceful, so she kind of runs around as it's happening. I hate watching this for her.... Possible stress because there have been a lot of storms in the Dallas area...but I'm thinking more of an underlying issue.....any thoughts/suggestions?? Thanks!
Hi Tressel, Welcome to the forum. I'm so sorry to hear you are having such a stressful time. I'm afraid I haven't had any experience of this issue in a dog of that age. At this point if I were you i'd probably get a second opinion from another vet just to make sure nothing has been overlooked. Do let us know how she gets along!
It's a bit frustrating when you have this kind of thing happening - been there and got that t-shirt! Unfortunately some parasites are notorious for not showing up on faecals. Unless they are shed in the exact stool that you sample, you're not going to see anything - and shedding can be intermittent. Have a read of this, for example: https://www.beaglesunlimited.com/health/giardiasis-diagnosis-treatment-and-prevention I'd suggest running at least one more faecal, if not two more rounds before trying anything else - to try to catch whatever it is, shedding. Metronidazole is supposed to be effective against giardia but some dogs don't respond to it. So I would talk to your vet about using fenbendazole (Safeguard/Panacur) 10% for 3-5 days at half dosage - as is also used for giardia. (If you're in the UK you can get this without a prescription as Panacur 10%.) Other things to try: Dried pumpkin powder. Two tablespoons on each meal. This adds bulk to stools. Slippery Elm powder - again, adds bulk and prebiotics plus coats the lining of the intestine. Probiotics - there's some research behind FortiFlora by Purina, but Mercola also make a canine probiotic with more strains in it. But really - I'd run more faecals, taking a part of 3 consecutive stools to improve the chances of getting whatever it is.... If it continues after all this, the next step could be changing the food to a bland diet of one protein source... and after that, it will be a biopsy of her intestine - so you really don't want to get to that...
Ours has had it from time to time. The vet said to give him anti-diarrhea pills, use the children's dose. Also we feed him hamburger and rice, instead of dry food, until he gets over it. He gets better quickly, like the next day.
