What is possibly wrong with our dog?

September 19, 2008 2:07 PM

What is wrong with our dog? He pants and pees and poos all of the time.

You are not a vet, nor are you our vet. We got home from being away for 6 months (me) and 2 months (significant other) and our animals were watched by a housesitter. Upon our arriving back, our dog (10 year old yellow lab) had diarrhea for a week. We watched him for a few days, then switched him to a white rice diet for a week, took him to the vet. The vet prescribed antibiotics and said nothing was wrong based on a stool sample. The antibiotics didn't help much. The poo was still pretty wet after a week of antibiotics. We switched him back to normal Iams dog food for nearly a week and the poo was still wet. We then put him back on white rice for a few days and have tried to switch him to California Natural dog food for the past few days. Still wet poo. This is now been a month of wet poo. He poos 2X a day, but was pooing more often at the beginning of the month.

Secondly, he needs to pee constantly. This is a dog that was 8am and 6pm consistently for years. Now he needs to go at 6am, 8am, 6pm, 9pm, 11pm, and 3am. He is also constantly panting, no matter how much water we give him.

Today I started giving him cranberry juice in case he has a UTI.

Any ideas? I am going to call the vet again, but after being told that nothing was wrong with him last time, I want to go in armed with some other ideas.

posted by k8t to pets & animals (14 answers total)

no really directly enlightening, but have you talked to your housesitter about whether and when s/he noticed your dog was pooping and peeing abnormally more than usual?
posted by violetk at 2:14 PM on September 19, 2008

10 years old for a lab? He may simply be getting old. That's what the peeing constantly says to me.
posted by fiercecupcake at 2:16 PM on September 19, 2008

canine diabetes? just a random guess based on the frequent urination. is he drinking extra, too?

such a shift in behavior seems serious. if your vet isn't taking it seriously, maybe you should get a different vet to give a 2nd opinion.
posted by gnutron at 2:21 PM on September 19, 2008

The housesitter was not great at communicating, unfortunately. Once he emailed to tell us that the dog had diarrhea and had asked us how to clean up the floor. From that point, it could have happened again but he didn't mention it to us. We've tried to talk to him about a number of things, but he isn't getting back to us.
posted by k8t at 2:23 PM on September 19, 2008

And I should add - the housesitter had a nearly-one-year-old puppy who was with him. We considered the possibility that he had to take the puppy out frequently and that our dog "learned" to go out frequently with them. But that still doesn't explain the wet poo.
posted by k8t at 2:32 PM on September 19, 2008

my dog had to pee a lot and eventually wouldn't eat after rejecting dog food for a while. It washis kidneys which were no longer functioning well. A blood test showed high levels of stuff, one of them vein creatinine (I think). Get a blood test asap
posted by Large Marge at 2:48 PM on September 19, 2008

Stress?
posted by Hildegarde at 2:55 PM on September 19, 2008

Seconding blood test, your vet took the low-cost see-if-it-clear-up-quickly-first approach, but a blood test will give them something more specific to look for, and since it didn't clear up quickly, it's absolutely justified.
posted by davejay at 3:46 PM on September 19, 2008

his is a dog that was 8am and 6pm consistently for years. Now he needs to go at 6am, 8am, 6pm, 9pm, 11pm, and 3am.

Most dogs urinate more than twice a day. In fact once every hour or two is normal during the day. Sorry I can't be more helpful than that.
posted by nickerbocker at 3:55 PM on September 19, 2008

A month of diarrhea is not normal. If your vet is uninterested in further tests to diagnose what is wrong (could be anything from Addison's disease to diabetes to a colon polyp to Lyme disease), then you need to 1) get a second opinion from another regular vet or 2) see an internal medicine vet. Do you know how to find one in your area? If not, look in your yellow pages under "emergency vet." Many times, vet emergency places are connected with/staffed by vets who have specialized in things like internal medicine, cardiology, orthopedics, etc. Internists can do colonoscopies and other imaging that most regular vets aren't either equipped or trained to do.

My lab had a colon polyp at age 8. It's pretty common, just like it is in older humans.

Please take your dog to a vet who's interested in finding out what's wrong. You wouldn't like to have diarrhea for a month, would you?
posted by ImproviseOrDie at 5:21 PM on September 19, 2008 [1 favorite]

Oh, and a dog the size of a lab should always be given the opportunity to urinate more than just every 12 hours. 1-2 times in the morning before work plus 2-3 times in the evening is pretty average for a lab owned by average 40-hour-per-week folks.

But he should also be able to hold it through the night. If he's suddenly waking up at night because he has to pee, his urinary tract should be checked out too.
posted by ImproviseOrDie at 5:25 PM on September 19, 2008

Find another vet. Bloodwork and perhaps a fecal culture are in order. There is something wrong and your vet should be concerned and wanting to find out what's up.

(Also, I hope you mean "cooked meat and white rice", not just white rice. A bland diet for a dog is three parts cooked white rice to one part cooked meat (hamburger or chicken, as fat-free as possible), not just rice.)
posted by biscotti at 6:46 PM on September 19, 2008

If you ask me, you need to track down this housesitter and have a very serious, I-don't-care-what-you-did-I-just-need-to-know-what-happened conversation pronto. The housesitter did something and/or failed to do something and you need to find out what. Stories like this (and I've heard dozens of them) are the reason why I am unable to trust my pets with anyone other than my husband and my mom.
posted by HotToddy at 8:00 PM on September 19, 2008

Emphatically endorsing all who are recommending to find a vet who wants to know what's going on.

It seems like more investigation (fluid tests, perhaps even x-rays of internal organs) should be in order.
posted by batmonkey at 11:26 PM on September 19, 2008