Diarrhea
Speaker: And probably one of the most common problems that people have to deal with is diarrhea; not a very nice problem, but just because your dog has got diarrhea, it doesn't necessarily mean you have to take a trip down to the vet, its quite often something you can cope with at home.
These are my top tips for dealing with diarrhea.
The first one is a bit of an unpleasant one, but its, clean it up with something really effective. So a good quality bleach or disinfectant, so it gets rid of any bacteria that's around the house, especially if you have got children, and also it gets rid of the smell, which is important as well, especially for the dog.
Then, to treat the dog themselves, the most effective way to treat diarrhea is to starve them; 12 hours might do the trick, but 24 hours is normally what I would recommend. So no food at all, plenty of water; we don't want them to get dehydrated, but no food for 24 hours.
During that period, not just give them water, but it's also a good idea to make up a rehydration solution to try and replace some of their electrolytes that they are going to be loosing as they have diarrhea. To do this, all you need to do is take a pint of warm water, and add into that one teaspoon of salt, like so, and a tablespoon or a couple of dessert spoons of sugar.
Now, this is a very effective rehydration fluid. The same as you would use for yourself, for humans, with dehydration. It works very well for dogs. The only problem you may have is persuading them to drink it, because to be honest, it is not particularly nice. But if you offer that instead of water, then hopefully they will drink it. If they won't drink it, then obviously offer them water instead.
Then once you have had your 24 hours, you have rehydrated them, and they have had 24 hours of starving, reintroduce them with a really light diet; something like some boiled chicken and rice is a really good thing to offer them. Perhaps some yogurt; live yogurt is full of probiotics, and these are really effective at replacing the bacteria in the intestine with good bacteria, and that helps them overcome the diarrhea.
Finally, if none of this works; if the 24 hour starve doesn't work, or if it's a more serious diarrhea, with blood in it for example, then you should go straight down to a vet, because it may well be that the dog needs antibiotics or other kind of treatment.
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