Chronic Large Intestinal Diarrhea in Dogs: Stories from My Diary-rrhea
After your veterinarian has narrowed down the origin of diarrhea to the large intestine and if your dog is still suffering from diarrhea (continual or intermittent) for 3-4 weeks, it is time to delve in with a more aggressive workup.
With diarrhea that doesn’t go away, it is crucial to revisit the history and disease progression with your veterinarian.
Details that seem unimportant to you (or you don’t even think of) often unveil the case.
For instance, knowing that the dog you just adopted came from a region where fungal infections are prevalent may make all the difference. Your veterinarian might not consider the diagnosis otherwise.
Dogs with chronic large bowel diarrhea usually appear healthy on physical exam.
This is not always the case, of course.
If your dog shows signs of being unwell in addition to diarrhea, a minimum database of lab tests is important. It is a way to gain more information about how your dog’s health as a whole is doing.
Laboratory tests may point towards a systemic problem. This gives your vet the information needed to know how aggressively and quickly action should be taken.
After ruling out obvious causes, large intestinal diarrhea calls for more invasive diagnostics.
Advanced diagnostics include::
- fecal cultures
- rectal cytology
- x-rays
- abdominal ultrasound, and
- enemas with dye to outline the path of the colon
After performing all these tests and hearing that your vet still has no answers is very frustrating, and probably getting rather expensive. Hang in there.
Colonoscopy
A colonoscopy with biopsy is likely the least invasive of the next advanced diagnostics. It is also the most direct way to find out what is happening in the colon.
Colonoscopy and biopsies could reveal a number of diagnoses such as:
- fungal colitis
- a mass (such as a malignant tumor or benign polyp)
- bacterial infections, and
- inflammatory bowel disease
Inflammatory bowel disease often affects both the colon and the small intestine and has many different types and underlying causes. They are classified based on the predominant cell type affected:
- lymphocytic-plasmacytic
- eosinophilic
- neutrophilic
- granulomatous,
- or histiocytic
Each of these are worthy of lengthy discussion
Dietary hypersensitivity is all too often an overlooked cause of signs of chronic colitis.
Dietary allergies have usually nothing to do with a recent diet change. Hypersensitivities develop over time as a result of chronic exposure.
There currently is no wonderful simple test to find out if your dog has a dietary allergy. It requires a strict exclusion diet for 6-8 weeks.
The options include a pre-made processed prescription diet or a home-cooked one. This approach takes profound patience on the part of the dog owner while their dog is still experiencing diarrhea. However, it is the only current way to rule out dietary allergy.
In summary, the cause of your pet’s diarrhea is not the easiest thing for your veterinarian to diagnose. And it is certainly not easy for a dog owner to continually have the patience required to find the reason. This is especially true when it is a chronic problem requiring what feels like endless tests.
There is often a simple reason for your dog’s diarrhea, be it intestinal parasites or eating human food to rich and fatty for your canine friend. However, many causes are serious and fatal if left untreated, such as lymphoma of the GI tract.
In all cases, diarrhea is a symptom of a disease. Finding out the disease is the difficult part.
The responsibility to pursue the cause of your pet’s diarrhea, and clean it up, lies in your hands. You are your pet’s health care advocate. I encourage you to find a veterinarian that realizes this.
Chronic large intestinal diarrhea characteristics:
- weight loss is rare
- appetite is usually normal
- vomiting occurs in a small percentage of patients
- feces volume may be normal or even slightly smaller
- normal to greatly increased frequency of defecation
- increased urgency
- straining
- frank blood
- mucous
Related articles:
Symptoms to Watch for In Your Dog: Diarrhea
A Tale of Many Tails—and What Came Out From Underneath
Acute Small Intestinal Diarrhea
Acute Large Intestinal Diarrhea (Acute Colitis)
Chronic Large Intestinal Diarrhea
Chronic Small Intestinal Diarrhea
Further reading:
Chronic Diarrhea in Dogs
Although it makes perfect sense, I didn’t know that vets perform canine colonoscopies. It is always good to know about things like this.
Yes, they can do that. I did even read about them using the “pill camera” instead too–which is better for sure.
The process of identifying dietary allergies can become SO frustrating! Our girl Daviana has a significant list of allergies that we have dealt with since I brought her home. Identifying them took years of limited ingredient diets and recording everything until we were able to narrow it down to not just one allergy, but a number. That being said, knowing is the first step towards effective management.
It certainly can. We lucked out–we tried the blood test and even though it’s not supposed to be accurate, it worked for us.
Other measures one can take is to include digestive enzymes which help break stuff don better.
This would be so hard to deal with. Thankfully, when one of my cats has experienced diarrhea, it usually only lasts a day.
Yes, most garden-variety diarrhea is self-limiting and resolves on its own.l
Hmmm so the root cause of some of these things can be hard to diagnose.I did not realise this. \
I always assume that a mild allergy or bad food causes most of the problems but I did not think of going the step further to hypersensitivity!
Still, it looks as though a diagnosis can be found, it just takes time and determination. Thank you for another helpful and enlightening post. I learn so much from you and have a fund of information to pass on to my anipal dog owning friends!
You have no idea how hard getting a diagnoses can sometimes be. Unfortunately, I’ve been there more than once.
My daughters chihuahua has what I thought were fits but see no similarities here. His eyes glacé over a d he starts to cry. I think because he knows what is coming. He then goes into a very fast walk around in large circles. He does this until you pick him up and hold him on his back. When you put him down he goes off faster then before I think. He runs or fast walks all over the house. He hates it but can’t stop. She gives him some Benadryl and put him in his crate. This used to work but now it takes more and more Benadryl. Our vet said it might be fleas but we have never had a flea problem and we do give the dogs flea meds.
Great post and always learning something from you. Thank goodness this is one problem I do not have with Layla although being the Jewish Mom I keep an eye on her and your posts always help with that.
Excellent info per usual! As with your small intestine “d” piece, having a couple Huskies who have GI issues, especially my late furagnel who had bouts of HGE, it is a scary thing, This info is such a great resource for pet parents!