Our 8-month black lab has had a bad tummy pretty much his whole life. Sometimes his first poo of the morning has shape, but is very very soft. The next one is like loose yoghurt, and the third one liquid. It really restricts where we can walk him, and upsets family members who otherwise would like to take him out for adventures. We’ve been to the vet several times, who is very relaxed about it – he thinks it’s just a puppy thing and he’ll grow out of it eventually. He says that the change in consistency during the day rules out parasites or intolerance, because it would be consistently bad, and that we should wait until he’s a year old and see whether it goes away before considering any tests. He said it might be emotional and as he settles out when older it might calm down. Following vet advice, and after reading hundreds of posts online, we have tried nine different kibbles each slowly changed over and kept the same for weeks, all hypoallergenic, wheat free, some completely gluten free, most single source single protein (just chicken, just turkey, just salmon for example, for most two tries at alternative brands of the same single protein), all designed for dogs with sensitive tummies – nothing works. We’ve had two foods shipped from overseas and we’ve tried brands recommended by our vet. We tried three feeds a day, we tried two feeds a day, all feeds come after exercise not before. We’ve tried other things like sweet potato and egg, chicken and rice and so on. Chicken and rice gave rise to ridiculously intense yellow soft spongy poo. It looked like he’d eaten a sponge you wash your car with and a canister of yellow dye (he hadn’t). We did tell our vet. We stopped all treats for a few weeks, changed treats, used hypoallergic gluten free single protein treats, tried using the same kibble as food for treats. In a week off work we kept him out of our garden and took him only to parks to walk and watched everything he ate to make sure he didn’t pick up anything – no change. We gave him fibre supplement – it got worse. Over the past week he’s now stopped eating too – at least, he’s eating about 1/3 normal but only if we hand feed him. He’ll eat chicken or treats but not kibble. He’s a working strain black lab with lots of energy, so normally lean, but now we can see his ribs when he walks. Our vet is relaxed, saying he’s a good weight. We've had him from 8 weeks and visited the breeder twice to check everything was OK with Mum, weaning and conditions. We have a large garden and live in the countryside near the sea, so he gets lots of adventures. We’ve got Pippa’s book, so we carefully staged increases in walk durations to make sure we didn’t over exercise him. He is *incredibly* excitable, but loving, so this hasn’t damaged his energy. He’s not yet shown any sexual interest in other dogs – he doesn’t hump, but has this week just started to cock his leg, so I presume he is getting to that stage now. We've grown up with dogs, but this our first dog together, so we may be a bit paranoid. During the week, I work from home two days a week, my mother in law has him one day, and on the remaining two days we walk him in the morning, have a dog sitter come in twice a day, and I walk him in the afternoon – I come home early on those days, so that he’s never alone for more than 2.5 hours. On the weekends we’re home. I guess I have two questions. Should we take him back to the vets and insist on a parasite check and allergy check and anything else anyone can recommend? And, he’s not castrated yet, and we’d rather try and hold out for as long as we can manage him for his own benefit. Could this be a contributory factor? If it is down to be being excitable, would castration calm him down and improve his tummy? Thanks for any suggestions, Richard.
Hi,I'm so sorry to hear of your poor lab's tummy troubles. We had a black lab who also always did what we referred to as "ice cream poos". She was quite poorly from the moment we got her. After months of our vet telling us not to worry we finally insisted on her stools being sent away for tests. When they came back we discovered that our poor girl had compylabacter, she needed 3 lots of antibiotics to clear it. However although she seemed better she still had awful poos just like your lab,we again kept being told not to worry and because it was our first dog and we didn't know better we just listened to our vet,thinking he was the expert. Finally,we requested a food intolerance test only to discover she was intolerant to beef,pork and dairy and on the advice from vet had taken her off her usual chicken kibble as he said chicken sometimes caused problems and also had been putting pro biotic yoghurt on top of her food to help her tum when in fact we had inadvertently been making it worse because of the dairy intolerance! So my suggestion would be for you to follow every course of action you can now to find out what's upsetting your lab,please don't wait like we did,our girl lived a long happy life with its but always suffered with her tum which we felt was down to poor care and advice from our vet when she was a puppy. Good luck and i hope this helps
Yes I think you need to go back and insist on more testing. If your present vet is still reluctant to take it seriously I would be looking elsewhere to be honest. Personally I wouldn't be considering castrating until he's finished growing, 18mths - 2yrs old, and even then I'd only have it done if he was displaying unwanted humping behaviour or was over interested in bitches. I can't see that it would calm your pup down enough to help his tummy, that's even if excitement is a contributing factor. The allergy testing is really useful, once I knew what foods to avoid my English Pointer had a symptom free life. Good luck. Let us know how you get on.
This is a link explaining giardia in dogs, I would consider this before changing food again. https://www.thelabradorsite.com/giardia-in-dogs/ I really would get another vets opinion as a growing pup needs proper nutrition and chicken and rice is not proper nutrition for a dog. So no I wouldn't go back to your vet, I would get a different vet. Don't bother with food allergy testing, they're not accurate according to my husbands dermatologist just a waste of money. Definitely no to neutering, at least until he's two, my boy is 4 now and still entire, he doesn't seem to notice bitches in season and he's most certainly a leg lifter but with training and teaching him how to behave, I have the best behaved dog I've ever had.
I would insist on testing and seek a second opinion. I would not feed chicken as some dogs mine included have an intolerance to it. I have not castrated my male dog he's fine and a better dog for having his testicles. My dog had colitis from and early age and it took a long time to get him to a stage where he had normal poos. I found one kibble which helped a low fat one and he's fine now. I also add pro fibre to his food which has really helped slow his gut down.
I would get some Panacur 10% wormer and give him the giardia dosage for 5-7 days. The dosage is on the data sheet which comes with it - be sure to check the specific directions for giardia. It is non-prescription and effective against giardia. You can order it online from many pet pharmacies. Castration would do nothing, but further stress his immune system out - which is clearly stressed, at this point. If a course of Panacur 10% doesn’t work, then I would return to the vet - a different vet if necessary - and insist on a stool sample taken from 3 consecutive poops.
