Canine Diarrhea: Simple Ways For Your Dog To Feel Better

According to the AMVA (the vets’ association), canine diarrhea is the third most common problem they see in their offices. If your dog has ever had this problem, you know how much this can affect your daily routine. Your dog’s stomach problem may come from an overgrowth of bacteria in their intestines, but its also possible that this might be due to overfeeding. The more serious cases can include bloating or even stomach cancer.

If your doggy’s tummy problems are not showing up with vomiting and/or lack of appetite, the problem might be mild and you can handle it yourself. Here are some helpful tips you might use to help your dog’s diarrhea. But if your dog has diarrhea and is showing signs of blood in his stool or even vomiting, you need to be sure to bring your dog right away to the vet.

Loose bowels, diarrhea, and other stomach ailments can sometimes simply be the result of changes in dog food, allergies, chomping up table scraps, or eating from the trash outside. Other causes might involve parasites such as worms that cause a bacterial overgrowth or imbalance in the stomach.

If you look in your dog’s feces and see worms, (they can look like spaghetti or rice), you might be able to just get an OTC dewormer medication and this might clear everything up. But some parasites like Giardia or other worms you can’t see are not so easily dealt with by pet owners. This will result in continuous stomach problems and further loose bowel movements. When this happens, you need to scoop up some of your dog’s stool and carry it off to the vet office for further testing.

You can probably handle mild stomach problems yourself simply by letting your dog fast without anything to eat just for one whole day. This is assuming that everything else is normal with your dog except for the diarrhea and that there are no other symptoms.

After a day of no food at all for your dog, give him or her a meal made of boiled hamburger, chicken and white rice with all the fat drained off of the meat. Just give your little dog friend small portions of food a half a dozen times a day until his feces are normal again. In some cases, vets would recommend the addition of small quantities of yogurt to the diet to add beneficial bacteria into their digestive system.