Digesting Food

[Ben Fougere]

We have been feeding Kingston the same food for almost a year now and his stool has not gotten much better. Some days his stools are completely hard, but most days his stools seem to be a combination of hard and soft. We have not been feeding him anything other than his food for the last couple of months and his stools don't seem to be getting any better.

We have discussed our issues with the pet store and they have suggested that we try to change the meat content from chicken to lamb. Does anyone have any thoughts on why a dog may have stool problems? I've heard that it can be a bacteria in the dog.

[Iron Glove]

I guess the first question would be "What are you wanting to achieve?".
You say the stool isn't getting any better - do you mean that you want to always have soft, or always have hard?
Our Toller is pretty well a BARF (raw food) dog and her stool is usually hard and small. It basically turns to ashes in a few days.
Daughter's chocolate Lab is on kibble (high grade mind you) and the stool is usually soft and and copious quantities. Both dogs are healthy and the stool situation is normal for both.
We have found that kibble contains a lot of filler which just means that the dog has to eat more to obtain the right amount of nutrition.

[Kody94]

Its been a crap-shoot (no pun intended...well maybe a little) with my lab for his whole life (15yrs and counting). It has been impossible to maintain any kind of consistency, and he always manages to get into some kind of bug that upsets his innards for a few days.

Best results have been a combination of hiqh quality kibble and raw meat (BARF, but not the raw meaty bones kind).

Meanwhile, our other lab has been bombproof...doesn't matter what we feed him, he very rarely has problems.

[RJ]

After the puppy food I put my dog on the adult lamb/rice and he had really inconsistent stool. Changed over to chicken/rice/oatmeal and haven't had a single problem since. Just do it gradually, over a week or 2.

[kinderdoggin]

How soft is soft? Does it hold a shape or come out in a puddle? Stool problems may be a result of several things. Can be a sign of worms. Could be a sign of an illness (giardia, coccidia, etc). Some dogs don't tolerate certain ingredients well (ie. corn). Can be a symptom of overfeeding. Could be an imbalance of bacteria in the digestive tract.

If the stool has been soft for a year then you should consider changing formulas -lamb and rice is often good for dogs that don't do well on chicken/corn. You might also want to try adding a teaspoon of plain yogurt to his meals (this helps restore the proper digestive flora). A small amount of canned pumpkin (not the spicy pie filler kind) can also help in this situation.

~Erin

[kastles]

Not too hard, not too soft. Sounds like a good one to me. :)