# Severe (as in explosive) Diarrhea - Suggestions?



## Ohwem (Oct 1, 2010)

Hi All,

All has been going well with my 9 month old, Chloe, until recently. Since Wednesday she has severe diarrhea (it gets everywhere...walls an all). She had a normal bowel movement Thursday...and then went right back to the horrible diarrhea.

I took her to the vet Thursday morning, as she did have diarrhea again as well as vomiting, and (hundreds of dollars later) they had no answers...they did xrays, fecal floats, and blood tests and everything was fine. No signs of infection, pancreatitis, obstruction, giarrdia, parasites, and so forth. No bloat, fever, or anything. Just very runny stool. 

So, they sent me home with an injection of anti-nausea medication, probiotics, and canned prescrtiption Science Diet food (which I don't normally feed and thus may not be helping...I am considering switching her to home-cooked bland food...such as chicken and rice).

So far I have managed to keep her hydrated (I am a vet tech student, so I know the signs of dehydration...that has been a big concern here) and plan to call my vet again for more suggestions...but if she starts to get dehydrated, I will have to bring her back in so that they can start her on IV fluids. 

I suspect that she had a normal bowel movement Thursday night because I cut her off from food (but still gave plenty of water) from Wednesday night to late Thursday afternoon and gave her small portions of food with probiotics. I'm thinking of trying that again tomorrow...

Any suggestions? I am at a loss and am very exhausted from constantly getting up with her (in addition to having to work early morning shifts) and such so please pardon my babbling and potentially incoherent sentences...

Sorry for the long post! Any thoughts are appreciated!


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## KZoppa (Aug 14, 2010)

have you tried adding some canned pumpkin to her meals? The fiber in the pumpkin should help firm her up. Also try slipping some plain yogurt in with her meals as well. The yogurt will help her tummy also with replacing the good bacteria. We recently had ick explosions from both our dogs. Give it a shot.


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## BowWowMeow (May 7, 2007)

Did they test for parvo? If not I would have that done ASAP. 

Also, you can give SubQs at home. I would fast for 24 hours and only give water. Then slowly introduce a home cooked, bland diet (brown rice cooked for twice as long with twice as much water) with cooked chicken breast. And I would forget about the yogurt and add probiotics. The canned pumpkin can be added to the bland diet.


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## vat (Jul 23, 2010)

What were you feeding before? Is it possible the pup got into something? My hubby thought one summer it would be a good idea to give our dog a corn stalk from the garden. Our corn had fallen in a storm and it was still green, just from the dog playing with it and chewing on it he had the runs for 4 days! I came home from work 2 days in a row and had to clean him and his kennel.


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## Jgk2383 (Aug 5, 2009)

stop all food for 24 hours, offer only water freely. After the 24 hour fasting period is up I would offer twice boiled brown rice and boiled chicken in small quantities.Make the ratio have more rice than chicken offer the rice and chicken until the stool is firm once it is firm you can gradually introduce her regular food in, if once you start to re introduce her regular food in and you notice she has runny stool again you have to start over from square one. I would add a probiotic in there every day and also a heaping table spoon of canned pumpkin. Be very careful with the canned pumpkin because it can also act as a laxative. I went through a living nightmare last year with my rescue, it was horrible, I was a wreck.


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## Jgk2383 (Aug 5, 2009)

also, giardia is often tricky to diagnose. Did they do a giardia snap or fecal?


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## RubyTuesday (Jan 20, 2008)

Absolutely fast & then feed very small meals of boiled chicken & rice with lots of added water. IF you're a multi dog household I'd suggest the others also do the fast/light meals just to stress Chloe less.

Da Vinci, my old Irish Wolfhound, was prone to bouts of explosive diarrhea. Stress was what brought his on & his biggest stressor was high heat & humidity. I put in central air a few yrs sooner than I'd planned to b/c apart from the ungodly mess, the heat was obviously truly unhealthy for him. I actually initiated extremely light feeding whenever the weather seemed to be approaching his stress point.


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## blanca (Mar 5, 2011)

vat said:


> What were you feeding before? Is it possible the pup got into something? My hubby thought one summer it would be a good idea to give our dog a corn stalk from the garden. Our corn had fallen in a storm and it was still green, just from the dog playing with it and chewing on it he had the runs for 4 days! I came home from work 2 days in a row and had to clean him and his kennel.


corn stalk! we just gave one (without corns) to my pup (5-month old) on friday night, and she's been having severe diarrhea last night. sigh, she just got her last shot on friday, and we took her to the forest yesterday. not sure if it's the corn stalk, the shot or some trash in the forest that cause her diarrhea... poor thing has to go back to the vet again.


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## vat (Jul 23, 2010)

blanca said:


> corn stalk! we just gave one (without corns) to my pup (5-month old) on friday night, and she's been having severe diarrhea last night. sigh, she just got her last shot on friday, and we took her to the forest yesterday. not sure if it's the corn stalk, the shot or some trash in the forest that cause her diarrhea... poor thing has to go back to the vet again.


I am willing to bet it was the corn. Ours did not have any corn on it either so hubby thought it would be ok for him to play/chew on. A BIG NO NO! Our garden is organic so there was no pesticide on it either. I just gave him yogurt and pumpkin for a couple of days and he was back to his normal self.


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## Ohwem (Oct 1, 2010)

Thanks for all the advice! 
I ended up going with the advice that the majority of you offfered: I fasted her for 24 hours (and gave just water), then introduced the rice with a little chicken, followed by the pumpkin and I already had the probiotics on hand from the vet, so she got some of that as well. So far, so good! She has had more firm stools for the past 24 hours now and we all are much happier!

They did do a fecal smear, as well, if I did not mention that. They didn't find giarrdia or any indications that they should do more thorough testing just yet. I've given IV fluids at home before (3 years ago when my 10 year old border collie mix was having health issues I had to learn how), but my vet wanted to monitor her if she did need IV fluids...

I'm going to keep her on the bland diet for another day or two and see how it goes...we are all very pooped (pun intended) over here...fortunately, my husband has a great sense of humor about all this.

As for anything she could've gotten into, I found out from my husband (later) that she got into my younger brother's room (he is living with us at the moment and has a cat that he has food for in his room, so normally we have to keep an eye on her and/or keep the door closed or else she'll try to sneak in there for cat food) and apparently, we later found a half-eaten leather belt in the closet. Sigh, lesson learned. 

Like I said, other than this bout of diarrhea, Chloe has been a breeze.


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