Chronic Diarrhoea - Page 1

I have just come across this forum after browsing the net for possible solutions to my dog Toms chronic diarrhoea.  Its a long story but I believe it was initially brought on by stress after his previous owner mistreated him by leaving him alone most of the time, closed up in a house.  When he first came to me he was fine, but I noticed that after a visit to the local kennels he returned with diahorrea that took a visit to the vets to cure.  This pattern repeated over the next few visits to the kennels and always a visit to the vets and some antibiotics seemed to do the trick. 

However nearly two years ago my wife and I had to travel on business for a few days and this time on his return from the kennels the vet wasnt able to help.  Nothing seemed to work and if it did, only for a short time.  Some months later I changed vets and now have every confidence in the vet we go to.  However the problem has persisted on and off since then.  In the last few week it has got really bad.  His stools are just coloured water and he has lost around 13kilos of his original 45 kilos over the past few months.  The vet has blood tested him for a range of disorders and found everything to be normal, including his pancreas.

The big difficulty we have is getting him to eat the prescribed food which is Royal canin intestinal.  He never used to be fussy but now is extremely so.  It seems that he is always hungry but only for food off my plate.  The dilemma is that I can get him to eat if i put a little chicken or fish into his dish, but this is what really upsets his stomach.  He has put on a little weight on the chicken and fish diet mixed with his Royal Canin.  If I put him back on the prescription diet he wont eat and will lose more weight.  He cant afford to lose any more.  We have tried the very latest probiotic and antibiotic prescriptions, along with loperamide and a steroid, all to no effect.

He is back to the vets on Monday for his monthly vitamin B12 injection.  I have starved him today after he had a major accident in the house during the night.  This is most unlike him and he is obviously out of sorts today.

Does anyone have any suggestions. 

Thanks in advance

Have you tried the traditional boiled chicken and rice? I am a raw feeder, but didn't used to be and in the past the chicken and rice has worked well for my dogs. I assume he has been tested for all kinds of parasites... I am just thinking Giardia or Coccidiosis. For colitis type diarrhea, in the past, in addition to the chicken and rice, I have used Tylan powder or Metronizadole. You can get the Tylan powder online. Put it into clear capsules (it has a bad taste) - 2 caps in the AM and two in the PM for about a 1 week, then you can lower the dose. It has worked wonders for many people that I know with GSDs who have colitis and/or diarrhea. Some people give it to their dogs long term. My sister's Border Collie gets colitis in the summer due to stress over thunderstorms and it clears things up in 12 hours, whereas nothing else worked.  Continue the probiotic and get your dog on digestive enzymes as both are beneficial for the digestive system no matter what is going on. BTW I would talk to your vet before changing anything. Please keep us posted. Best of luck to you and your dog.

what does he eat at the kennel?
what does he eat at home?
have you checked for coccidiosis and giardia?

I would ask them about SIBO it can be very difficult to kill bacteria in the small intestine for some reason

My initial thoughts were, what is going on at the kennel and not at home?

Please have your vet start with checking a stool sample for parasites and bacteria over growth.  If that shows up clear, check your food list and talk to your vet about doing gradual changes.  I am sure they will want to see what the body is doing thru blood test.  This sounds like it is a chronic problem and if you are working with a vet all will work out with finding what is going on.
Always,
Cee

The Royal Veterinary College in Hertfordshire are doing research on Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), a condition causing chronic Diarrhoea and subsequently loss of weight. The study aims to collect large numbers of samples from GSD's suffering from inflammatory bowel disease and from GSD's who are healthy. Whereas I understand they had enough blood samples from dogs with this condition, more samples from Healthy Dogs were required but in order to partake in the trial the dog must be older than 4yrs of age (this apparently is the most common age for the onset of this condition), that does not suffer from chronic or recurrent vomiting or diaarrhoea and who is not on any long term medication for any other form of illness (as any form of medication can effect the readings gained from the blood samples). 

Since we have 5 GSD's here all over the age of 4yrs, covering 4 generations from Grt Grand-dam to Grt Grand Daughter of various ages (12, 10,  2 x 7, and 5 years of age) non of which suffer from, nor have ever suffered any of the symptoms created by this condition,  I contacted the RVC to offer them up as trial subjects and they were accepted, the fact that all 5 were related over successive generations was of particular interest to them as it was possible it may be easier to identify whatever it was that these 5 had in common. 

Obviously this study is in its early stages so no medical help or discovery, other than what is already known (as inaffective as it is) is yet available. IF it helps there was a thread on this database worth reading re the effective treatment of Gardia, so its worth a try to treat for that just in case that is the problem. I would be interested to know how old your dog was when he started with this condition and if you can relate it to any form of Innoculation injections he might have had to have prior to going into the kennels because it is thought this condition is attributable to an Auto Immune disorder that could be triggered by the dog developing an over active immune system that starts to attack itself. Obviously if your dog had previously been invaded by innoculation virus's his immune system will have gone into overdrive and added to the stress of being kenneled this could have kick started this condition, thats providing he is suffering from this condition which can only be confirmed by means of an intestinal biopsy.  

Regards
Sue b

Continued below - A little more info on the condition and what causes it.

Royal Veterinary College, Herts, University of London
Association of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in Toll like receptor genes
with inflammatory Bowel Disease in German Shepherd Dogs
 
 Background
Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) is a group of disorders in which one or more sections of the stomach or intestinal tract has become invaded with the dogs own white blood cells leading to inflammation due to sutoimmunity. Over time, this inflammation causes the intestine to become less efficient at absorbing nutrients from digested food and weight loss, vomiting or diarrhoea often results. There are many other causes of vomiting and diarrhoea in dogs and a diagnosis of IBD is made by eliminating these possibilities with a final diagnosis being made by gut biopsies and the demonstration of an increased number of white blood cells in the intestinal wall. IBD can be controlled, but not cured. Some patients do very well on treatment whilst others may require alterations in therapy every few months to treat flare-ups and recurrent symptoms. A proportion of dogs respond to dietary theraply alone, however, some animals may need antibiotics to control their clinical signs or require immuno-suppressive therapy such as steroids to reduce the inflammation within the intestines. The cause of IDB is poorly understood. It appears that genetics, diet, normal intestinal bacteria and abnormalities of a dogs immune system leading leading to an autoimmune disease all play a role. German Shepherds are particulary susceptible to IDB and it is believed that this is due to their genetic makeup. Variations in the dogs DNA could in part be responsible for this susceptibility. These variations may alter the protein that is coded by the DNA, hence altering its function. 

Genetic variations in specialised immune receptors that bind to components of bacteria and alert the immune system have been found to increase susceptibility to IBD in people. Therefore we hypothesise that variations in the DNA of specialised canine receptors are associated with IBD in GSD's. Identifying such genetic variations will ultimately allow us to potentially breed this out of the German Shepherd populationthus protecting them from I~BD. In addition, novel therapeutic ideas may be implemented either to target this defected gene or protein product.

In order to assess the genetic variations present in the specialised receptors of GSD's, we need to collect a small amount of fresh blood from the animal. We then extract DNA  from this blood and sequence it to assess the variations present. It is vital that we are able to collect blood not only from GSD's suffering from IBD but also from healthy German Shepherds so we can ascertain what is normally found in this breed. Blood samples will also be collected from the dog to assess intestinal and pancreatic function to screen for disease that may have yet to manifest clinically. The residual blood from these tests will be used for genotyping.
End of relevent information

Regards
Sue b

You mentioned that the " Chicken and Fish" seem to make his stool worse ??? Did you ever consider taking him off Chicken completely - even weeding it out of his Kibble ?? I produced a puppy out of a close line breeding , he is perfect except for the fact that he is ALLERGIC to Chicken - of all things !!! He was fine as a puppy , but when he hit about a year and a half he started getting itchy and loosing hair etc.   Not everyone reacts in the same way.

My husband has an Wheat and Lactose intolerance, and you guessed it , he gets upset tummy with just about anything he eats.  

If this was my dog , I would buy a Lamb and Rice diet  - Check the label - no Chicken bi- products, no mystery meats, no Chicken fat etc.     I would also add bulk to his diet with Pumpkin , or Canned Sweet potatoes - this is a grown dog and I would probably give him a whole can of Sweet potatoes ( the small one ) in the morning, Pumpkin about 1/4 cup - I would not immediately mix it in his food and give him a chance to try it. You may have to mix it in cooked rice that has been cooked with " Beef" bouillon.   Another thing I would do is get your dog on some Enzymes , and probiotics.. This will help him digest these weird things we are feeding him, and also hopefully restore some peace to his digestive system.
You can also - and I recommend this immediately - give him Kaolin Pectin !! Having the run's like that is bound to cause ulcers in his intestines and colon which could turn cancerous, its never healthy to always have the runs just like its not healthy for humans to keep barfing every meal up ( Bulimia). 

BTW you can test if he is Allergic to something by removing the allergy inducing agent, and Ask your Vet for a Script for Benadryl .

Give your friend a scratch behind the ear for us, 

Whisper Gray