Poo question - kinda gross!
Dec 7, 2008 10:39:05 GMT -8
Post by Tricia on Dec 7, 2008 10:39:05 GMT -8
From what I've read (we had the question on CP - how many times a day does your dog poo), 2 times seems to be the norm. Every once in awhile Holly will throw in a third one, but that's only on nights when we're up really late.
I used to feed Royal Canin chihuahua formula and she really did well on it. However, I guess it was about a year ago, her poos started getting softer at the end and had a bad smell to them like she had an upset stomach. I did a lot of reading and decided to switch her to a food without corn in it because apparently they really can't digest it well. I started her on Solid Gold Just a Wee Bit (a lot of people feed solid gold barking at the moon, but I wasn't comfortable with such a high protein level). Wee Bit is holistic and only has rice as a filler. The kibble is really tiny, so she likes that, and it's salmon and bison, so although it smells like fish food when you open the bag, I guess it's pretty tasty. Switching to this food completely stopped the softness of the poos until recently. I had asked the vet before about the consistency of poo and she said that the first poo of the day will be the firmest and subsequent poos will tend to be a bit softer, but Holly seems to have totally firm poo and then soft at the end (almost like she's just trying to squeeze every bit out of her colon and some of it hasn't had a chance to "set up" yet).
I don't know what to do to get totally hard poo
I know a lot of people use pumpkin to firm up diarrhea and it works really fast, but you can also use pumpkin on a constipated dog to make them go, so I'm not sure what would happen if you gave it to a dog with formed poo in an attempt to make it firmer. I may experiment with that after Christmas, but I don't want to mess with anything before we have to travel because I can't chance causing diarrhea 
I used to feed Royal Canin chihuahua formula and she really did well on it. However, I guess it was about a year ago, her poos started getting softer at the end and had a bad smell to them like she had an upset stomach. I did a lot of reading and decided to switch her to a food without corn in it because apparently they really can't digest it well. I started her on Solid Gold Just a Wee Bit (a lot of people feed solid gold barking at the moon, but I wasn't comfortable with such a high protein level). Wee Bit is holistic and only has rice as a filler. The kibble is really tiny, so she likes that, and it's salmon and bison, so although it smells like fish food when you open the bag, I guess it's pretty tasty. Switching to this food completely stopped the softness of the poos until recently. I had asked the vet before about the consistency of poo and she said that the first poo of the day will be the firmest and subsequent poos will tend to be a bit softer, but Holly seems to have totally firm poo and then soft at the end (almost like she's just trying to squeeze every bit out of her colon and some of it hasn't had a chance to "set up" yet).
I don't know what to do to get totally hard poo
I know a lot of people use pumpkin to firm up diarrhea and it works really fast, but you can also use pumpkin on a constipated dog to make them go, so I'm not sure what would happen if you gave it to a dog with formed poo in an attempt to make it firmer. I may experiment with that after Christmas, but I don't want to mess with anything before we have to travel because I can't chance causing diarrhea 
So I really don't think it had anything to do with it, but I just haven't gone back to it because she's more than satisfied with a few drips of yogurt on her food 
