My 9 month old pup is having diarrhea and mucus in her stool (hence the title). It's been going on for the past 3 days, then today I noticed more mucus in her stool, usually its nice firm turds. I did some investigating online but thought I would ask for some of your opinions before I decide to take her to the vet. I'm basically following the raw recipe from The Pit Bull Bible and have been doing so for over 2 months with no complications. The things i have recently added are chicken feet as a "treat" and a little more liver, not sure if this could be the issue or not. Her appetite, weight and energy hasn't changed. Thanks
I just thought about something. Late last fall I dispatched of my laying chickens, seems I spoiled them and they wouldn't eat scraps or any grains. Anyhow I fed them to the dogs, they weren't completely healthy because of their finicky eating habits and all of my yard eventually got loose mucus filled stools. I treated with Sulfa-Trim for the first round then Sulmet when dogs became reinfected.
Despite being super diligent cleaning stools daily and cleaning all of the poop scooping equipment I had some dogs get a 3rd round of the loose stools. So off to the vet I went with some samples. He did not find Coccidia or Giardia no worms nothing. He said he thought it was just a bacterial infection passing around because of the moist environment (rain and snow) that was caused by the chickens initially.
He sent me home with Spectra Guard Scour Check a red liquid dosed @ 1ml per 5lbs BID (2x daily) it knocked it out by the 2nd dose and it's pretty inexpensive. You can order it online without a prescription some feed stores carry it as well. Maybe you'll find this info helpful.
Just an update. Pups stool is fine, I just waited it out a couple days to see what would happen. My thought is the silly dog must've gobbled down something on a walk. guess the owner(me) should have been paying more attention .
My vet told me, that there is no cure for it. Many dogs can get it, and the owner doesn't even know about it as grown dog's body functions will kill the parasite.
Younger pups showed symptoms as described above, plus later there was also little bit blood in their stool. This parasite can cause intestine infection in young pups and in this case they were given antibiotics for the infection.
Stool sample need to be sent to a lab to make sure if it's Cryptosporidium or not.
5/6 pups had it at the age of 4 months and symptoms were gone one day after starting antibiotic treatment.