what to try next

I honestly don't understand ... why is the size of the poop and the smell even an issue?  If you go for "small" poops you automatically increase geometrically the incidence of anal gland issues **particularly** in a small dog.

I don't know about the "automatically" part so much, and I'd like to see some research on the claim for "geometrically", but when people talk about small firm stools being their goal, usually they mean by comparison to the usual sort of thing you see on foods with a high content of low nutritive value grain fractions and plant products.  For instance, many such products use soy bean meal to increase protein levels, though many dogs digest SBM poorly.  Undigested/excess protein products leave the system as urea, both through the kidneys and directly from the large intestine, leading to stronger smelling waste.

Some plant fractions are okay to manage stool quality and foster proper gi probiotic health (in the wild or as scavengers, the "trash" a canid eats with whole prey would play this role - feathers and fur of low digestibility).  But when they are used to bolster as fed energy levels, the energy comes with the price of increased fiber content. 

Some dogs handle this fine - on other dogs, this seems to have the same effect that a diet of prunes would have on humans.  Except that humans are made to handle such fiber much, much more easily.  Food moves quickly through the stomach and stays in the gi for quite a long time.   So eventually a human could adjust to eating solely, say prunes and beans for the rest of his or her life because these foods would remain in the gi for long enough for the human to develop the probiotic and enzymatic profile needed to digest them. 

But the dog has little natural recourse against such an unbalanced assault on the system.  The dog sends food through the gi very quickly, so foods that need to be digested there (soluble fiber for instance), present the dog's system with little opportunity to develop the wherewithall to digest them.  The result: soft, voluminous stools and sometimes gas.

In general, if I'm seeing stool volume that is comparable to the amount of food that went in, I consider that too much.  Fiber swells and water is mixed in, of course, but there shouldn't be that much waste exiting that particular port.   In puppies I feel this is especially important.  If the stool is too slimy to pick up without smearing on the grass, then I will look for the reason why. 

I have the advantage of having one dog who always has what I consider to be ideal bowel movements.  He's on 100% prey model now, no carbs of any kind except very rarely (once a month with monthly meds) he'll have some stew, which is also mostly meat.  His stools are about 10% of what goes in by volume (I don't go so far as to weigh poop, lol, though I did once with one dog last summer!).  Typically he has a single movement once in the morning.  He poops once, walks around for a while, then goes again, for that 10% total.  They are half the size of my other dogs who eat kibble, and I just leave them because if you happen to step on one right after he goes, it won't even stick to your shoe, and if you pass by later that day, it will already be nearly dry and by tomorrow it will be gone in a poof of greyish powder.  Ben has not had anal gland problems since I switched to raw, eight years ago - in fact none of my dogs do.

This is not to denigrate any food out there.  I'm merely explaining how stool quality can reflect what one chooses to feed and in particular the effect it has on your dog.  They can't talk to us and tell us that any particular food makes their tummies upset!

And sometimes excretory issues may have little or nothing to do with the food fed.  There are several conditions which cause stool problems no matter what is fed, though sometimes one can offer some relief by adjusting the type of food fed.

Thank you all for the suggestions.  I guess I don't like to see large poop because if it is coming out that end that means it is not being digested.  It's not really about cleanup because my dogs are so small anyway so I'll never be picking up large piles regardless.  And in addition to it being large, it's mushy as well, which isn't good, and sometimes it's softer than other times.

I don't think the problem I'm having has anything to do with premium foods, like I said he was having issues with pro plan too and I don't consider that a holistic food.  In fact I'm not sure if it's really food related at all, but rather stress related.  I've noticed that he gets mushy poo whenever he is stressed out, like being somewhere he is not comfortable, or being forced to do something that he doesn't like such as going potty in the rain (he HATES the rain, lol).  I'm thinking it's an IBS sort of thing unfortunately.  I'm picking up some canned pumpkin and yogurt and I think I'm goign to mix that in with some boiled chicken and rice to see if things stablize. 

Liesje

A single carb and a single protein, something that is not in the current food giving the dog problems.  For example, Coke was eating Canidae ALS and got bad diarrhea for 2 weeks.  Instead of doing a slow switch or an instant switch, he ate plain white rice and boiled ground beef for three days and then THAT was mixed into his new food to switch over.  The ingredient in the ALS causing diarrhea was turkey, hence why he ate beef in his elim diet.  The ingredient in his new food is lamb.  I think the diet our vet gave us was 2/3 white rice to 1/3 ground beef or chicken.

And I feel I should clarify, in my earlier post when I said "smaller poops" I meant small AND firm.  Honor has a tendency to exhibit gastrointestinal stress in the form of mushy poop or diarrhea, so the fact that she's been having small and firm poops on Innova has been a relief to both of us.