GSD with ulcer or hemorrhagic gastroenteritis (poo pic in post) - Page 2

My last German Shepherd had an episode of hemorrhagic gastroenteritis at age 1 1/2 years. He was hospitalized for 3 days and scoped. He was treated with Metronidazole, Carafate and Augmentin and discharged with instructions to slowly return to his regular diet (which was lamb and rice and numerous people food treats). After several days he started vomiting again and was readmitted. He was scoped again, given a diagnosis of presumed Inflammatory Bowel Disease, but a colon biopsy was not done. He was discharged and put on a limited ingredient venison and potato diet and continued on Metronidazole. I was advised that he should stay on the venison and potato diet for the rest of his life with no treats which I took seriously as the next episode would require a biopsy and if the diagnosis was confirmed he would be treated with prednisone for the rest of his life. Fortunately he recovered, eventually the Metronidazole was discontinued and he did well the rest of his life with only an occasional single episode of vomiting. He lived until age 12. I hated not being able to give him treats but more importantly he had a healthy life until he developed DM around age 11. Also because he was extremely thin, around age 10 months he was tested for pancreatic insufficiency and was negative. It took awhile but after being on the venison and potato diet he started putting on a little more weight although he was always on the thin side.

Around 20 years ago I had a GSD with similar symptoms that developed around age 7. She was scoped and diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome/Inflammatory Bowel Disease. She was on meds and a vet prescription kibble diet. I don't recall the meds she was on. It was a struggle to keep her well. Unfortunately, it eventually caused her death as her intestinal wall ruptured. I don't mean to scare you and hopefully you will have the success that the previous poster had.

Her death was my catalyst for doing research into proper animal nutrition.

Only thing I would add is to try pumpkin in the bland diet instead of rice. Sorry I can't make the link live as the enable editor is not working for me.

http://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/2014/09/01/pumpkin-dietary-fiber.aspx

Good luck to you.


 

A lot of posters have spoken well of pumpkin as a dietary constituent, over the years I've been coming here. You could try a site search for those references to pumpkin, to see if earlier threds mentioning it contain anything else useful to you.

Nobody ever speaks of the nutritional value of pumpkin tho. I am guessing its a benign filler.

Pumpkin is pretty high calorie, with lots of starch, and I think some natural sugar. I've been told it acts as an ant-inflammatory for the bowel, and its high fibre content helps solidify the poop. Same idea as giving a human with the runs some Metamucil.

Not sure how high starch can be good for canids.

http://www.dogfoodadvisor.com/best-dog-foods/raw-dog-food/

Very good information. Not saying raw is a cure all as it's not. But it's something you may want to consider or at least try in efforts to eliminate your dogs problem.
Regardless, I hope he gets feeling better soon.

One other possibility here - is there any chance your dog has repeatedly eaten something he shouldn't? It could be toxic mushrooms, vinyl siding, gravel, wood chips, acorns, poisonous plants, cleaning solution, God only knows what else.

I worked with a dog that the vet thought had inflammatory GI disease because of repeated episodes of terrible diarrhea. And then the owner caught him eating lilies of the valley and found chewed up lilies of the valley all over the yard. The dog was lucky his heart didn't fry out. His owner spent most of a day ripping out every lily of the valley in his yard and that was the end of the problem.

Could goose poop cause these GI problems? We live across the street from a lake, and the geese are everywhere. There's no way to escape it, they poop on our yard, walkway, sidewalks. So that is a recurring snack he tries to grab. But he probably has gotten that way more then these 3 times of sickness. Otherwise I can only think the treats on the two occasions.

I should probably add the vet thought ulcer because he had OCD surgery at 6 months and was put on NSAIDs for a while. He is now 4. So her thought was that resulted in an ulcer.