Dogs with occasional diarrhea.

Dr. Marie replied:

Thanks for your question. Making homemade diets for dogs is a controversial and you will see a different opinion amongst veterinarians sometimes.

I have found that it is often hard to balance a dog food properly. So, what this means is that sometimes we can be giving too much protein, fat, or different vitamins or minerals. However, if your dogs are getting a decent amount of commercial dog food along with the extra food we shouldn't have to be too concerned.

Are you feeding raw food or cooked chicken? You will read MANY things online about the benefits of a raw diet. However, I will tell you that I have often had to treat animals for diarrhea when they are on a raw food diet. Again, it's a controversial area.

Whenever I have a patient with off and on diarrhea the first thing that I recommend is a fecal exam to check for parasites.

Next, I will often do a course of 5 days of an antibiotic called metronidazole which often helps with diarrhea.

I will sometimes run a DNA diarrhea panel which looks for different types of bacterial infections and parasites that can be hard to find.

If you are not sure if it is the chicken that is causing the problem, try cutting it out for a month and see how the stools are.

I hope this helps!

Dr. Marie.

---This question was asked in our Ask A Vet For Free section.---


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