Dogs and cats with loose stools are all to common a complaint of pet owners. If you have a pet with either persistent or periodically abnormally soft stools it is important to discover the cause of this problem. Diarrhea is a symptom and not a disease and may have many causes. Having your dog or cats stool regularly tested for intestinal parasites is probably the first and simplest test to have your veterinarian perform when trying to discover the cause of diarrhea. Roundworms, hookworms, whipworms, tapeworms coccidia, and giardia are all common intestinal parasites that can cause persistent loose stools and can be detected by a routine microscopic “fecal flotation test”.

If you feed your dog or cat from the table or regularly change his or her dog food you may be periodically introducing foods to which your pet is either sensitive or allergic. Putting your dog on a non-allergic diet like HA, venison and rice or duck and potato, and feeding nothing but this diet for 1 month will help you distinquish whether the animal’s problem is allergic or due to some other cause. A blood “Elisa” test is also available to help detect food allergies and to recommend less allergenic diets.

Another very common cause of diarrhea is a condition called inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). If IBD is suspected then a good way to confirm this suspicion is to check the appearance of the intestinal tract lining with a fiber optic endoscope to see if there are any inflamed abnormal looking areas. If an abnormal area is detected, a small biopsy specimen can be obtained and sent to the histopathologist for a laboratory diagnosis. If “endoscopy” and “histopathology” are out of the question due to financial considerations then a “therapeutic trial” may be performed to see if using anti inflammatory drugs like metronidazole or prednisone will eliminate the diarrhea. If either endoscopy or the above described therapeutic prednisone test, points to inflammatory bowel disease then long term drug therapy would be the conventional medical solution. However, for those pet owners who would prefer not to use cortisone or metronidazole therapy, holistic medical care using nutritional therapy, herbal medicine, and acupuncture are very capable of dealing with this bowel problem.

Some animals are chronic chewers or scavenger and they are constantly getting into things. Whether the pet eats the food out of the garbage, the baby’s sock, a branch of the tree, or crab apples that have fallen to the ground, these foreign substances when ingested can play havoc with the intestinal tract and produce a mucousy and even bloody diarrhea. Keeping everything put away and out of reach from your pet may be difficult but is the only way to eliminate this cause of diarrhea.

There are many other less common causes of diarrhea such as those caused by enzyme deficiencies and emotional stress. Digestive enzyme and/or anti anxiety supplements will effectively treat such problems.

So you see there may be many causes for diarrhea. Trying to distinguish the true exact cause of your pet’s loose stool requires patience and in some cases may not be a cheap proposition.

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Woodside Animal Clinic is a unique, very personal,  one doctor practice where, for over 35 years, Dr. Simon has been healing dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, rodents, and reptiles with both conventional and alternative medicine.  Dr.  Simon is the author  of 4 pet care books and he writes a monthly pet care column in the Mirror newspaper.

Woodside Animal Clinic  sees pets from all over the greater Detroit Michigan area including Royal Oak, Berkley, Huntington Woods, Ferndale, Pleasant Ridge, Detroit, Hazel Park, Madison Heights, Warren, Centerline, Clawson,  Troy, Sterling Heights, Southfield, Birmingham, Bingham Farms, Franklin, Farmington, Farmington Hills, Novi, Wixom, Brighton, Livonia, Plymouth, Commerce, Ann Arbor, Ortonville, Waterford, Union Lake,  Rochester,  Rochester Hills, Auburn Hills, Utica,   Romeo,  Windsor, and Toledo.

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Food allergies can often be ruled in or out as the cause of diarrhea by putting the patient on a very restricted non- allergenic diet, such as lamb and rice. Intestinal parasites, known as whipworms, are frequently present in such small numbers that they can easily be missed by routine laboratory methods. Worming for whipworms even though the fecal test turns out negative is sometimes the only way to detect the presence of these hidden whipworms and stop the diarrhea.

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If your pet has a recurrent or chronic disease that has not responded to the best efforts of conventional medicine why not give alternative medicine chance to show what it can do.   Recurrent ear infection, skin allergies, inflammatory bowel disease, and osteo arthritis are just a few of the many chronic diseases that have conventionally required continual drug therapy to suppress symptoms which have been reducing the pets quality of life.  These drugs may be temporarily successful at reducing symptoms but their long term use often results in side effects that may make use of these drugs of questionable value.

Because alternative medicine takes a more holistic view point in its quest for healing it may  focus on an organ system that appears to have no relationship to the symptoms that are being addressed.   Since alternative medicine sees  all organ systems as connected  its therapy is often geared to using modalities that affect the organism as a whole rather than a drug geared to treat a symptom or the organ system where the symptoms occur.

 When alternative medicine feels it must directly address symptoms the use of herbs, homeopathic remedies, specific nutrients, and plant produced hormones will accomplish the task with minimal side effects.    Keep in mind that many of our most celebrated drugs were originally isolated from plants but then were concentrated and/or synthesized in laboratories.   The extraction of active ingredient from the plant and the isolation of it from the other synergistic balancing chemicals found in the intact herb is what makes a drug more likely to produce side effects.  Because drug production isolates and concentrates what it  believes to be the “active ingredient” it looses the safety net that is present when using the whole herb with its less concentrated, better balanced mix of chemicals.

 Alternative health care professionals believe that the pet owner should play an integral part in the healing of their pet.  The practitioner believes that a partnership with the pet owner is necessary for the most rapid and successful healing to occur.  In order for the pet owner to serve as an effective member of this healing partnership they must thoroughly understand their pets problem and the plan for healing.   Consequently the holistic practition must schedule longer appointments to allow for client education and to answer all the pet owners questions. 

 Alternative vets believe that inflammation resulting from nutritional and environmental toxicity in combination with nutritional deficiencies is one of the very basic causes for ill health.   Minimizing toxin intake and maximizing toxin excretion is the foundation for health and healing.  

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  Dr. Simon is the owner of the Woodside Animal Clinic in Royal Oak Michigan where he has been treating dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, ferrets, rodents, and iguanas with both alternative and conventional medicine for over 30 years.  Dr. Simon is the author of 4 pet care books and writes a monthly column for the Mirror newspaper.

Woodside services the Oakland  and Wayne County  area including the cities of  Berkley, Ferndale, Pleasant Ridge, Madison Heights, Hazel Park, Southfield, Birmingham, Troy, Warren, Clawson, Sterling Heights and Farmington Hills. 

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Let us start by considering the source of dietary inadequacies. Poor farming practices rape our soil depleting it of the essential minerals we, our pets, and our food animals need to live healthy lives. Consequently, even when we provide our pets what appear to be a balanced diet some very important ingredients are often missing. To add to the problem most commercial dog and cat pet foods are what I term “grain based”. They are inappropriate for carnivores and difficult for them to digest. Feeding such grained based diets will result in a “leaky gut” that over and extended time results in such chronic diseases as arthritis, allergy, auto immune disease, and inflammatory bowel disease. Furthermore, the processing of commercial pet diets tends to destroy many of the nutrients originally present and eventually leads to a nutritional deficiency unless supplements are provided .

Next, be aware that our food supply whether plant or animal has become polluted by food production practices that add toxins to both our pets and our own already nutrient deficient food supply. These toxins get into both our food and our pet’s food in the form plant insecticides, plant fungicides and as hormones, antibiotics and parasites that are fed to our food animals. To add insult to injury manufacturers then add other potentially dangerous chemicals to our food in the form of coloring dyes, chemical flavorings and preservative. Finally, commercial pet diets that sit too long in the warehouse develop toxins in the form of rancid fat. Water pollution is a source of additional toxins that result from industry contamination and attempts at water purification. The air our pets breath and the soil our pets walk on are sources of additional toxins. Airborne toxins can be a result of car and industry exhaust, cigarette smoke, out gassing from new carpeting or photocopiers. Plant, grass, weed, tree pollens, and biting insects can also be classified as toxins. The pets yard may become another source of toxins if lawn chemicals are used.

Worm eggs, fleas, ticks and dangerous bacteria are somewhat different types of toxins that can be found in the yard or dog parks. Finally, we should not forget about household toxins such as those found in the trash can, garage floor, under the sink, or in the basement. Even drugs and vaccines may be consider a source of toxins if the pet is over immunized or develops a reaction to a medication.

Psychological and physical stress can be looked at as a different form of toxin. . Excessive stress suppresses the animal immune system and can exhaust the adrenal glands. Psychological stress can result from abuse and punishment, lack of human companionship, and lack of training resulting in an adversary relationship with their owner. Stress also results from loud noises such as fireworks, lack of sunlight, lack of shade and ventilation with heat stress as a possible outcome, and lack of warm housing during the winter. Asking a dog to hold its urine for an excessively time is very stressful. It may surprise you that not providing your pet an opportunity for exercise is also a form of stress.

The final cause of disease is a genetic defect which can show up as physical birth defects, congenital organ disease, allergies, immune deficiencies and autoimmune disease to name just a few. The health of our genes and immune system determines how successful our pets will be at dealing with nutritional and environmental toxins and with stress.

                                  ****************************************************

Woodside Animal Clinic is a unique, very personal,  one doctor practice where, for over 35 years, Dr. Simon has been healing dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, rodents, and reptiles with both conventional and alternative medicine.  Dr.  Simon is the author  of 4 pet care books and he writes a monthly pet care column in the Mirror newspaper.

Woodside Animal Clinic sees pets from all over the greater Detroit area including Royal Oak, Berkley, Huntington Woods, Ferndale, Pleasant Ridge, Detroit, Hazel Park, Madison Heights, Warren, Centerline, Clawson,  Troy, Sterling Heights, Southfield, Birmingham, Bingham Farms, Franklin, Farmington, Farmington Hills, Novi, Wixom, Brighton, Livonia, Plymouth, Commerce, Ann Arbor, Ortonville, Waterford, Union Lake,  Rochester,  Rochester Hills, Auburn Hills, Utica,   Romeo and Flint.

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