Colitis

hi all glad k9 is up and running again. happy xmas new year and all that. I've been told there is a section on here that covers Colitis but can not find it , I have looked in FAQ and can't even open the thread marked stomach problems. Our 8 month old pup Cassie was poorly over xmas with diarrhoea passing blood and mucus in her poo, she does have a bit of a history of having a dicky tummy. The vet has given us a preliminary diagnosis of Colitis. I know a bit about colitis in humans but not dogs. The main info I am after is the treatment of it, How likely is it to reoccur? Any web sites others have found helpful? Any personal experiences? She's been put on promax so far has only had one dose as she was only seen yesterday, so far it has helped . Any advice would be greatly appreciated. thanks Sue :thumbsup:

I have a friend whose collie had colitus . Ill give her a ring and ask what she did

JAX said:

I have a friend whose collie had colitus . Ill give her a ring and ask what she did

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thank you :thumbsup:

Hi I have a staffy who suffers from flare ups of colitis. Hers is normally triggered by stress so Christmas could have set yours off or change of diet. We discovered that Kizzy's colitis was the food she was on she had suddenly become intolerant of. She was fed on the Morrisons equivalent of Bakers which is highly coloured. Also found that she can't take those coloured munchie chews often in Christmas dog stockings! We changed her onto a more expensive gluten free chicken and rice complete. Has 24% chicken and roughly same % of rice I ger it from animal feed merchant and it is branded with their name so not sure who makes it. She also is fed a little in often as we find her tummy can't cope with bigger meals. She was given Protexin Pro Kolin+ (Dog) 30ml Prokolin from vets which I now buy on line so when she has a flare up this normally sorts her out. She comes off her new food and will get fish or cooked chicken with potato(chopped up) as she won't eat rice or pasta and also knowing her allergy would actually make her worse. Touch wood the flare ups are few and far between since putting her on new food and I always know when she is getting one of her flare ups as she will go up to her bowl and look like she is hungry and then stretch like she has a sore tummy.

Hope all this might help, though each dog who suffers from colitis is different

Good luck

Hi

Sounds like your Christmas was fun :wacko:

If your puppy has had bouts of Colitis already then it is probably likely to be a lifelong condition unless she has Campylobacter or a silimar condition. Has your vet had samples analyzed and or treated her with metronidazole or another antibiotic to rule this out?

My Daisy has properly diagnosed (by biopsy) LPE in an ulcerative colitis form. Lots of tiny wormy little poo, straining and blood. Most distressing.

Diet is major in controlling this condition. Stress can cause a flare up.

After changes by Burns to the diet that she did well on for 6 months (Pork and Potato) and a spell on their Fish & Maize (which did not agree with her) I started her on Natures Harvest Adult Dog Food Duck. They do a puppy version.

Daisy has been on this for 2 weeks with no other food given. It is early days for us but so far so good.

What a difference in two weeks. It would appear that digesting kibble based foods (even pre soaked) may aggravate her problems.

I am worried about the lack of bones, chews and crunchies for her teeth. This can however be addressed when her gut is functioning normally.

At that point I will try and re-introduce some form of bones or chews. For now it is a toothbrush :thumbsup:

Natures Harvest Dog food is not the cheap but I have ordered online from seapets & petplanet and it works out at about £1 per day.

Every dog is different but Daisy's condition is cronic and she is prone to developing a bowel cancer because of it so anything I can do to reduce flare-ups and the risk of this happening because her bowel wall is so weak is worth it.

This seems to be a nutritious and gentle foodsource and so far I am delighted with the results.

You do need to give a new diet 6-8 weeks to start being fully effective.

It may take some trial and error to find a diet that your dog tolerates.

I should add that my Dog Toddy has straightforward food intolerance. He has been doing well on the Burns Fish & Maize.

I hope this information may help.

Rang my friend , she put Murphy on Burns Fish and Rice and gave him 2 teaspoons of` Protexin ,`Its a probiotic and pre biotic for humans I think bought from a local chemist called Manor Pharmacy, They do have a website I believe.

Hope this helps

i would feed the dog what its supposed to eat "meat" chuck the cereal laden complete out and start with feeding a basic meat diet i would use raw but cooked is better than kibble no need to buy expensive processed meat based pouches go to your local butcher and they will sell you dog mince

I feed raw and have never had a dog with G I problems yet my sisters last 3 Airedales all had the same problem (colitis) yet all 3 came from different breeders and lines

Ive never had a dog with G I problems either , but like us humans , some have digestive problems and need special diets :thumbsup:

devo12 said:

i would feed the dog what its supposed to eat "meat" chuck the cereal laden complete out and start with feeding a basic meat diet i would use raw but cooked is better than kibble no need to buy expensive processed meat based pouches go to your local butcher and they will sell you dog minceI feed raw and have never had a dog with G I problems yet my sisters last 3 Airedales all had the same problem (colitis) yet all 3 came from different breeders and lines

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The Barf / Raw diet is very highly thought of and has been proven effective in many dogs with digestive disorders.

It may be a suitable option worth considering depending on the type and severity of Colitis that Cassie has

My Daisy was adopted at 2 yrs with her condition already existing. In order to have an accurate diagnosis, a bowel biopsy and endoscopy were carried out to establish a diagnosis and the extent of the existing bowel damage.

Raw is not an option for Daisy. Unfortunately with certain conditions dogs are unable to process raw meat properly, the bacteria are not killed in the gut and a bacterial growth results worsening the condition and vet treatment with strong Antibiotics is required.

It would appear that some dogs with digestive disorders do well on a specific diet for some months before becoming intolerant to that too.

I am considering giving Daisy the Natures Harvest two weeks of the Duck and two weeks of the Lamb in rotation to help prevent this. She does not tolerate Beef or Chicken cooked or otherwise.

The Natures Harvest pouches are a balanced diet and are sterile reducing the risk of undesirable bacterial growth.

Creating a balanced cooked diet for a dog with certain forms of Colitis is an option but you would need to ensure that the nutritional & vitamin content that is lost during cooking is supplemented.

For a dog requiring a cooked meat diet the pouches are convenient as you do not have to spend a lot of time processing, cooking and making up batches to freeze. Electricity is so expensive these days that I am not sure that a balanced homemade cooked diet would be less expensive.

Protexin Pro Kolin paste is well worth keeping in the house as dogs with Colitis do tend to have 'flare-ups'. (it is almost impossible to keeep your dog from eating something that is not part of its strict diet :blink: )

The first thing you need to do is find a diet that agrees with your dog and get Cassie well before her bowel is damaged permanently.

You did not say what tests if any your vet has carried out to reach the diagnosis of Colitis, stool samples for Campylobacter or a silimar bacteria are vital as Cassie may not have Cronic Colitis but something that will respond quickly to specalized Antibiotics. Has she been given a course of Metronizidole Antibiotics by your vet?

Sorry, probably information overload in last post but hope some of it helps. You can pm me if there is any additional info I can help with.

Our dog had diarrhoea with blood and mucus due to Giardia and Campylobacter infections.

It was not diagnosed on the first poo sample and the vet dismissed it as a food intolerance.

But it continued for a couple of weeks while we tried to track down the culprit food and during this time he was losing weight.

So I sought a second opinion and the new vet said he would only dismiss infection as a cause of these symptoms after three infection-free samples.

Giardia was found on the second sample and treated with antibiotics and on the check sample the Giardia was gone but he had the Campylobacter which was treated with different antibiotics. The check sample showed Giardia again so more treatment before three clear samples.

So I would agree that infection should definitely be excluded carefully before accepting the symptoms to be due to another cause.

Hope you get sorted soon.

Thanks for the feed back all. I have also since managed to find the other thread on here about Colitis on p3, which I found really helpful. Eve the vet said the diagnosis of colitis was a 'preliminary' based on the history and symptoms Cassie has had over the last few months, she's not my own vet, we are seeing him tomorrow.

Cassie has always been 'sensitive' since we had her. she'd have the occasional bout of diarrhoea if she'd eaten something different eg tripe sticks, jumbone raw bones and james well beloved also disagrees with her, all seem to cause her problems but have only ever lasted less than 24 hrs and usually after she's had scrambled egg and rice she returns to normal so we have never needed to see the vet about it. This time however she had profuse diarrhoea all night xms eve night, I gave her the usual egg and rice which appeared to work for a few hours and did reduce the amount she was passing but wasn't stopping it completely, then we noticed blood and mucous in her poo. In view of her history and the fact things were not improving that is when we took her to see the out of hours vet covering our surgery. Based on what had happened over the last 48 hrs and the rest of the history i gave the vet, ( eg shes always had offensive wind and her breath smells abnormal). The vet said it was colitis but this would need to be confirmed with endoscopy scans blood work etc but that would need to be discussed with our own vet, which I will be doing tomorrow. She said it would be better to try and manage her with diet and if that didn't work then we would need to look at investigating further to confirm the diagnosis. The vet didn't give any antibiotics because Cassie did not have a raised temp, she did however, say if there was no improvement with what I'd already been given then anti biotics could be a consideration. We were told to use Promax paste is this the same as Prokolin? And we were given Royal Canin gastro, thankfully as of today we have no blood or mucous and fully formed poo. phew!

It has been suggested the protein levels in her food could have caused it? The vet and others have suggested Chappie and I have noticed on the other thread since that CSJ ( the sensitive one lamb and rice) has been used with a dog with colitis with good results, we use it for Duke who has a sensitive tum with good results, so I'm going to ask the vet about trying it?

Thing with with this episode is that there didn't appear to be any obvious cause she'd not had any different treats. Others have however since said maybe the protein levels were too high in her food? i will ask if we can have some of that pokolin (prokolin promax?) stuff to keep in the house as so many have suggested.

I'm also keeping a food diary and will take a poo specimen with me tomorrow as has been suggested.

I'm not really keen on raw feeding but if all else fails am willing to give it a try. if this is the case I'll be back on her picking the BARFies brains again lol

I'll also ask the vet about trying natures harvest, as suggested. Eve please can you let me know how your trial with daisy goes as thats another option.

Well thanks for the fab advice all. Thank god K'9 is back up and running :thumbsup: xx

I've not had chance to read the whole thread so sorry for any repetition!

We were told that sudden changes in protein sources were to blame for flare ups eg if you feed a lamb based food and suddenly change to chicken, you could trigger a flare up. So you may find that a raw diet might not work unless you feed the same protein source every day. Any food changes need to take twice as long as with a 'normal' dog. Roscoe's worst do was when we ran out of his usual food and had to switch to another last Christmas as we couldn't get hold of his usual JW (before we knew anout the sudden switch being a trigger). We did the change over a few days but the vet said in future any changes would need to take place very slowly over two to three weeks.

He is now on a mix of CSJ CP18 and CP21 and has not had a flare up all year

My 2 have colitis, they were on meds to begin with , but changed their diet to duck/ rice james wellbeloved. They get a little chicken/pasta in the morning and the kibble is left out so they graze on it. Sofar so good with my 2. They do get the odd treats of markies, pork pie and raw hind bones. You should get loads of advice as I did :thumbsup:

Thanks again peeps for all the advice. Good news Cassie has not had any further episodes of Diarrhoea at all today. Took her to my own vet, he says he is not sure about the diagnosis of Colitis, he feels being that she is still so young it could be to do with her having an immature GI tract? He said keep an eye on what she is eating put her on Chappie and CSJ WGF (the same one our Duke is on) and monitor closely. He said should the diarrhoea reoccur bring her back and we will look at whether further investigations are necessay then ( If it did happen again i would request that he test her poo for bugs as Eve suggested). I think at the mo he is of the mind that the CSJ will do the trick.

I am just incredibly glad and relieved that she is back to her old self again o :wub:

Thanks all sue x :thumbsup:

Thats fab news you have the Cassigator back, I was worried about my little granbaby :thumbsup:

JAX said:

Ive never had a dog with G I problems either , but like us humans , some have digestive problems and need special diets :thumbsup:

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Yes i understand, but i have noted that when someone on the forum asks for advice re a dog with GI problems it is common that they also have other dogs with the same problem? it is maybe that these problems run through certain lines as a inherent problem if so it may be useful to know so these breeders can address this problem. or as in humans stress can be the root problem

devo12 said:

JAX said:

Ive never had a dog with G I problems either , but like us humans , some have digestive problems and need special diets :thumbsup:

Click to expand...

Yes i understand, but i have noted that when someone on the forum asks for advice re a dog with GI problems it is common that they also have other dogs with the same problem? it is maybe that these problems run through certain lines as a inherent problem if so it may be useful to know so these breeders can address this problem. or as in humans stress can be the root problem

Click to expand...

(repeated from other post)

There are documented facts regarding specific types of Colitis affecting certain breeds such as Basenji, Boxers and GSD.

I do not think whippets as a breed are more prone to bowel problems than any other breed. They are however greedy and scavengers (many breeds are, it is in a dog's nature) and this can lead to bouts of Colitis but not cronic Colitis related conditions (and there is a difference).

There do not seem to be any facts or statistics relating specifically to whippets & bowel / digestive disorders.

All my previous whippets were fine with no sensitivity. Daisy had a history of a bowel disorder when she came to me at 2 years. Her condition is cronic and cannot be cured only 'managed'. Toddy on the other hand has bouts of colitis brought on by eating rubbish from time to time and the fact that he is a highly strung dog. My other two have no digestive problems.

None of my whippets are related but all are rescues. Stress and nervousness does seem make a dog more prone to digestive disorders, just as with people. Puppies from breeders whose main corcern is profit often do not socialize the pups properly which can lead to dogs of a nervous disposition and therefore probably prone to digestive stress related disorders. These breeders would not be interested in addressing the problems that hey have created as profit is their main concern.

Improved communication probably makes us more aware of digestive disorders and K9 being a whippet dominated website probably compounds this with regards to whippets with digestive problems. I do not however believe that whippets are 'prone' to digestive disorders any more than the next breed.

Happy New Year

Eve

devo12 said:

JAX said:

Ive never had a dog with G I problems either , but like us humans , some have digestive problems and need special diets :thumbsup:

Click to expand...

Yes i understand, but i have noted that when someone on the forum asks for advice re a dog with GI problems it is common that they also have other dogs with the same problem? it is maybe that these problems run through certain lines as a inherent problem if so it may be useful to know so these breeders can address this problem. or as in humans stress can be the root problem

Click to expand...

As far as I know there is no history of GI problems behind Cassie on either side, I own her dad and he is fine as is her brother, Ive spoken to Cassies breeder and there is no history on the mothers side. I do know for fact that she was brought up very well and not for profit. Sometimes these things just happen unfortunately, both myself and Hannah have been worried about Cassie

(just to add I'm not looking for an argument just saying)

I would also like to thank everyone for their input in helping Cassie get well

My own theory is that Roscoe's is not an inherited condition ( because I have his full brother who has no problems and keep in touch with his Mum, two brothers and a sister who all are fine) but was sparked by an incident when he was younger which has caused his bowel to be more sensitive and easily inflamed. Roscoe was fine until he was about one when he found and partially ate a soft plastic plant pot. It passed through in bits :x but he did have slightly bloody/ jelly diarrhoea for a couple of days and we took him to the vets to be on the safe side. His symptoms came back a couple of times and then the worst last New Year when we had to go to the emergency vets as he was running a very high temp, was in a lot of pain and couldn't keep anything down, including water. It was the emergency vet who gave a really thorough examination and suggested the advice about protein changes causing problems - since we adhered to her advice we have had no problems. He was in a worryingly bad way and lost a lot of weight very quickly - it was only because she could see how dedicated we were that the vet let us bring him home as she was on the verge of putting him on a drip and keeping him in. She only released him on condition we saw our own vet first thing the following day We had to give him water through a syringe every hour, he had anti biotics, kaolin paste, painkillers and something else to settle his colon. So glad he was insured...it cost £150 consultation before any medications as it was New Year's Day and we had to go to the ER vets in the next town as our own were closed.

So in conclusion, if more whippets have this condition (which is debatable), it might be because they are more prone to eat ridiculous things!