My name is Sam Meisler and I am a small animal veterinarian. Today, we’re going to talk about one of my favorite subjects; dog diarrhea. When we look at diarrhea, the first thing we have to decide is whether it’s a small bowel diarrhea or a large bowel diarrhea. Small bowel meaning the small intestine. Large bowel meaning the colon and the rectum.
First, we look at the symptoms, from the symptoms alone; usually we can determine whether it’s a small versus large bowel diarrhea. Small intestine diarrhea is tend to be large volume diarrheas but no accidents in the house. The small intestine has got the problem, not the large intestine where the stool is stored before coming out. So, the dog can store it appropriately, store it properly in its rectum and go when it’s appropriate.
Large bowel diarrheas on the other hand, you will see a definite sense of urgency about going to the bathroom, and about having a bowel movement. And often we see accidents in the house, that’s probably the number one symptom as we see a dog that can not hold it to go outside. Normally, a well house trained dog has a bowel diarrhea inside the house.
We can also see other symptoms with large bowel diarrhea, mucus in the diarrhea is a common symptom and sometimes a blood in the diarrhea is a common symptom of colitis.
Now, once you figure that out, we can then kind of go and decide what kind of diseases can cause small bowel versus large bowel and work up a diagnostic plan from there but that gives you an idea of what we’re looking at when we come up with a case of dog diarrhea.
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