How to Treat Dog Diarrhea

Top natural tips for How to Treat Dog Diarrhea are simple steps to quickly and effectively treat your dogs' disease and improve their health

What is Dog Diarrhea?

Diarrhea in dogs is an acute or chronic disease caused by one or many different reasons. Both kinds of the disease have the same consequences as watery stools, the increase in number of bowel movements in one day than normal.

The disease can be caused by one or a group of causes. The level of risk may vary depending on the cause. Diarrhea may be accompanied by symptoms such as vomiting, gastro-intestinal loss of water, electrolytes, blood, etc. leading to debilitating or even death. The most dangerous disease is the acute diarrhea, which can be transmitted or not transmitted depending on the cause.

What causes Dog Diarrhea?

  • Virus: virus with the scientific name Canine distemper virus is the main cause of dog diarrhea. The virus enters the body through the digestive tract, respiratory tract. Then they enter into the bloodstream and invade epithelial cells. Incubation time is often 6-9 days.

Dogs with this disease are at almost all ages. 2-3 months dogs will be very seriously ill and die at a higher rate.

  • Undigested food: Because your dog eats something that cannot be digested, such as trees, grass, etc.
  • Food intolerance: it means your dog having trouble digesting special foods – new foods leading to indigestion. A great number of dogs get difficulty in digesting dairy products (lactose intolerance), meats such as pork, beef or chicken or any other foods.

What are the symptoms of Dog Diarrhea?

  • High fever in the initial 1-2 days
  • Depression, anorexia, vomiting, like lying in bed
  • Watery stools with intestinal mucosa blood
  • Difficult to breathe, runny nose
  • Sad, moody or scratchy
  • Twitch muscles, shaking
  • Finally the dog may be paralyzed

Here are the top 14 most recommended tips for how to treat dog diarrhea that you can consider applying for your dog in order to eliminate the diarrhea for your dog as well as protect the health for your pet.

1. Take away All Food and Water for 24 hours

When the dog has diarrhea, food in its gut cannot be normal digested but pushed too quickly through the form of watery stools. Therefore, the first priority on how to treat dog diarrhea is that you should take away food for 12-24 hours in order for the bowel wall of the dog to calm down and work as normal.

2. Feed Several Small Servings of Bland Diet

Instead of feeding your dog with its usual food, just give it some small servings of bland diet through a day. You can choose either of things for a bland diet such as: cooked white rice, cottage cheese, boiled chicken with no skin, no grease, scrambled egg, boiled egg, boiled potato, baked potato.

3. Avoid Feeding Dog with Bones, Snacks, Table Scraps

These foods would be your dog’s favorite foods. It has no problem to feed your dog with the foods if the dog is normal. In contrast, these things can cause big trouble when your dog is having diarrhea. They will irritate the intestinal tract during this time that will make the situation more serious. Therefore, the most important tip in how to treat dog diarrhea is keeping those stuff away from your dog.

4. Provide Fresh Drinking Water

Fresh drinking water will help improve the situation of diarrhea in dog. During this period, your dog can be very thirsty so providing it with fresh water can reduce the risk of dehydration. It also supports the recovery process in the body of the animal.

5. Try a Prescription Diet from the Vet

In the situation that your dog did not really enjoy the bland diet then you should ask your veterinarian for prescription dog food for stomach healing. Special foods such as Hills ID and Purina EN are often recommended to promote the healing process of diarrhea. This is also a beneficial method that you can consider for how to treat dog diarrhea.

6. Ration Dog’s Portion Size

When your dog has diarrhea, it is hard for the dog to consume a large amount of foods, even this can be harmful and make the situation more serious. Therefore, you should divide foods into some small portion before feeding him.

Each time, provide the dog one portion of food then stop. Continue to feed him with the same amount of food for 4-5 times during the day. This will give the bowel less stimulation, speed up the healing process and prevent diarrhea from returning.

7. Transition Your Dog Slowly Back to a Regular Diet

This tip for how to treat dog diarrhea should be applied when the situation of diarrhea in your dog is improving, you can gradually ease him back to the normal diet. However, do not switch it straight back the dog to normal food because the bowel still needs time to completely heal itself.

After about 2 days of serving bland diet, you can transition him back to normal food by combining both normal foods and bland foods with changeable rates. In the first day, supply the diet with the mix of 2/3 bland food and 1/3 normal food. In the second day, you can increase the amount of normal food to 2/3 while decrease bland food to 1/3. The next day, a diet with total amount of normal food can be served.

8. Administer Probiotic

Probiotics are very necessary for how to treat dog diarrhea because they contain a lot of helpful bacteria that can help to speed up the recovery form diarrhea. A supplement of probiotics can boost the bacteria population in the bowel and support the digestive tract.

You can mix an extra amount of probiotics in your dog’s daily diet once a day and continue for 5 days later. However, notice that the bacteria in dog’s bowel are different from those in human’s. Therefore, you should not give your dog human probiotics.

9. Do not Give Your Dog Human Diarrhea Medications

This tip is actually extremely important on how to treat dog diarrhea due to the fact that the dog’s and the human’s bowel are different. Therefore, medications for human diarrhea might not act in the situation of a dog. Instead, you should give your dog its own medication by asking veterinarian. This will help reduce bowel movement and prevent serious problems until it is too late.

10. Determine If the Dog Has Eaten Anything Dangerous

Diarrhea is often caused as the result of eating something that is harmful and the dog cannot digest completely. In the situation of the dog consuming toxic such as household cleaning products or rat poison, therefore it is an essential priority on how to treat dog diarrhea is making the dog flush out whatever he ate or bring him to the vet immediately.

11. Take the Dog’s Temperature

If the dog is running a high fever, it may be suffering from an infection.

A normal temperature of a dog is 100.5 to 102.5. Therefore, if the temperature is 103.5 or higher then it means that the dogs may get high fever. In this situation, it is better to take advice from your veterinarian.

12. Take Note If the Diarrhea is Combined with Vomiting

The combination of diarrhea and vomiting is a very serious symptom because it causes the loosing of fluid in both ends that make the dehydration more and more serious. In some cases, this may even lead to the death.

If the dog is having symptom like this, it is very necessary to provide water as well as help the dog hold fluids. Immediately seek veterinary attention before the problem becomes too serious.

13. Check for Dehydration

Dehydration is very dangerous because it can reduce the blood supply to organs such as liver and kidneys that make the problem more serious, even lead to the death. If the dog has a serious diarrhea then he will become dehydrated.

Therefore, it is required that you should always check for dehydration in your dog to make sure if the situation is controlled or not. In unfortunate case, bring your dog to veterinarian for best treatment.

14. Inspect the Diarrhea for Blood

If you find dome blood in the watery stools, it means that the dog is having inflammation or hemorrhage. Inflammation can make the dog uncomfortable while the hemorrhage can potentially cause death. The difference between them is not really clear. Therefore, in this situation, you should ask for treatment from your veterinarian before serious consequences happening.

Also Read: Traveler’s Diarrhea, Montezuma’s Revenge: Causes, Treatments, and Prevention

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