Please pardon this long post.
Willie -- new golden puppy. Sixteen weeks old. Diarrhea about five days after moving in. The vet prescribed Albon for possible coccidia and heavy bacterial growth in the intestine. Problem cleared up immediately. Was on Albon for two weeks. Three days after being taken off Albon the diarrhea kicked in again. Back to the vet. More exams could find no parasites or worms. Prescribed Panacur for possible giardia. Cleared up for a couple of weeks but it kicked in again a few days ago. Back to the vet fecal examine, etc. No parasites. Now on low residiue food and metro for ten days. I'm also giving him a serving of yogurt with each meal. Three meals a day. 1 1/3 cup per serving.
BUT -- I don't think the vets (I have worked with three good ones in the clinic.) have the problem diagnosed correctly.
I think that the problem is dog hair. Mollie, my other golden retriever, has long beautiful hair. Mollie and Willie have become inseparable. They are always together and there is a lot of "ferocious" play. Willie is always tugging at Mollie -- her ears, her tail, the long feathering on her hind legs. He is ingesting a ton of hair in the process. In addition to this he loves to eat dried grass and anything else that fits into his mouth. I brush both dogs well and I'm going to do it even better. I keep their play areas as free from loose hair as possible. But still I am quite sure that as long as they play together Willie is going to be ingesting dog hair.
This information is from the website "Pet Professor”: "... Hair: I've listed hair all by itself since it's so often the problem in both diarrhea and constipation...especially in cats. Many cats and dogs shed excessively and therefore lick and swallow too much hair to digest easily which means the hair ferments in the lower bowel (instead of being digested in the upper bowel) (cheap pet food ingredients cause a similar problem). This fermentation process in the lower bowel (similar to humans eating beans) causes irritation to the colon which in turn causes diarrhea...."
OK. Willie is ingesting the hair what do I do about it? By the way the ingested hair in the feces looks like owl pellets. Strictly compacted hair. Almost nothing else in that particular segment of the feses. As an aside, just before Willie's first bout with diarrhea he vomited a mass of hair that was the size of my thumb. The first bout of diarrhea started later in the day.
When Willie has problems with the diarrhea it always is in the night. He gets me up three or four times and poops till there is no more. Lots of gas too. He eats all of his meals and has one major rather firm bowel movement in the late afternoon/ early evening and then later just before bedtime the diarrhea kicks in. As long as he is on the meds there is not the diarrhea problem.
But he still poops the occasional hairball. And usually when he passes a hairball there is other poop --mostly firm and vile smelling. Is this the intestine working overtime trying to break down this hair mass? After pooping the hairball I can expect a good night's sleep.
Any suggestions for dealing with these hairballs? Do you folks think that this might be the problem?
Tom
p.s. Last year at this time I had a ton of questions about Mollie. She finally was diagnosed with inflamatory bowel disease which we have pretty much under control with a special duck and potato diet. I know more about dog poop than I really want to know.