Dr. Lera Clone explains why dogs have blood in their stool, using a 12-year-old dog named Bella as an example. Dark tarry blood means upper digestive tract problems, bright red means lower. She walks through diagnostics based on the dog's energy and appetite, then common treatments like Proviable probiotics and metronidazole.
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Hey, guys. Dr. Lara here today I am here with Bella and Bella is coming in because she's been having some blood in her stool. So the topic of the video today is going to be blood in your stool. How much is okay and how much is not. All right, so bella is a 12 year old female spayed dog. And Bella is, as you can see, she's a little nervous. So that's why she's trembling. And that's just kind of how she is when she comes to the hospital. So it's not just the fact that she's on the table. She's just usually kind of nervous when she's at the hospital. The and so Bella does have a history of having soft poop or soft stool and sometimes getting blood in her stool. Last time she had an episode like this, I want to say, was in July. So we're looking about 12, five months out. And so usually, you know, I'll go ahead and I have like a little concoction or combination of medications that I like to put patients on when they have soft stool and plus or minus blood and stool. Now, blood in the stool, what can cause blood in the stool? Blood in the stool can be caused by a number of different things. It can be caused by just getting into something that doesn't sit well with their stomach. So it could be grass, it could be a different, you know, going through the garbage. It could be some food that you went ahead and gave them that they're not used to getting. It could be a new bag of food, not a different bag of food, not a different brand or a different flavor, just a new bag. It could be going to the bottom of the bag. It could be if they ingested like a foreign ob, it could be intestinal parasites, it could be cancer, the list goes on. It could be stress. So the list is very, very long. Those are just some of the more common things that can cause blood in the stool. Now, there are different kinds of blood in the stool. There's dark chary blood. And so that's typically gonna be an indication that there's something going on higher up in the GI tract, an ulcer, irritation in like the stomach or in the smaller intestines. And then when you see bright red blood, that's typically something that is an indication where there's irritation in the lower GI tract. That means the. And so the reason, the difference between the dark chari and the bright red is that the body has had time to digest the blood or break down the blood and the blood has oxidized and so that's why you're seeing the difference in the, in the color. Really the biggest important, the biggest factor that we get or piece of information that we get from the color of the blood is where it's at or where it's coming from. That being said, we've talked about some of the, you know, the different kinds of blood, we've talked about the different potential causes. And so then I. Let's talk about what are some of the different tests that we would do. So depending on how the dogs are doing, we may look at doing some blood work. Typically, the two major questions that I will ask are how's the energy level on a 1 to 10 scale? Anything 6 or below, I recommend doing blood work. And then if it's five or below, then I would recommend doing blood work in house. The difference between doing blood work in house and sending it out a is obviously the turnaround time. If we do the blood work at the hospital, we're gonna get the blood work back typically within 30 to 60 minutes, assuming everything runs well with the samples and we get enough sample the first time around. Also, if we send the blood work out in comparison, we usually will get the results the next day, depending on which test it is. The other thing is cost. At my hospital, it does cost more to go ahead and run the blood work in house. And I'm anticipating that's going to be the case at almost every hospital just because when we as veterinarians send these samples out to the reference laboratory, they will run, they will run a lot more samples. And so they have the factor, the cost factor go down because they have so much volume going versus smaller animal hospitals, or just animal hospitals in general, just don't have the pure volume that happens. So that's the reasoning behind the difference in the cost. The other thing that we will normally do is we would look at doing some X rays, potentially depending also on the severity of what's going on. Number two question that I will look at is how's the appetite? Is the appetite on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being normal for them, 1 being no appetite. If it's 5 or below, it is very concerning. So those two major questions, and then the last, most common thing that we will do will be a stool analysis. The stool analysis is checking for intestinal parasites. That's one of the most common things that can cause a GI upset, blood in the stool especially, and is also something that is very easy to treat. That being said, how do we go about treating it? Typically for me, what I like to use is I like to use a product by Nutrimax called Proviable. Nutrimax is not a sponsor of this particular video, just the product that I one of the products that I use, it has a combination of a paste that the clients will administer to their pets by mouth every two, two to three times a day. And that is to go ahead and get the the stool more consistency. I find that most of my patients find that paste very palatable. So it means that they like the flavor of it. Most dogs do enjoy getting it. It is a peanut butter consistency. And then the packet also comes with a set of capsules which have the probiotics inside and you just open that stuff up and you put it on the food. The other thing that I will go ahead and send home is something called Metronidazole that has anti inflammatory effects on the intestines and sometimes will help to get some of the bad bacteria under control. The third thing I would typically send my patients home with, depending on how bad the stool is. If the stool is very, very liquidy and if the patients have a lot of urgency, I will send them home with something called sucralfate. Sucralfate is typically something that's going to be put in a syringe of water, it's going to be dissolved and it's going to be administered by mouth. It typically tastes like chalk. It's kind of a pain in the butt, no pun intended, to administer. That being said, those treatments I usually find patients will start improving significantly within four to six hours. Okay, now final question or final comment? People will usually get very concerned about blood in the stool. And so the question that you might ask yourself is when is too much at the point where I need to bring my pet in and when is not a point where I need to freak out. So usually if I see a few flecks or a few sprinkles or drops of blood on the stool, it is not something that I'm totally freaked out about with Bella because she is acting fine. We are going to be sending her home a medication. I'm not going to be doing any of the blood work or the X rays. I will be sending home a fecal cup with mom. But if you see a lot of blood then that starts to get more concerning. The if you see like a little piece of mucusy blood on top of the stool, that's okay as well. But definitely something worthwhile to bring up to your veterinarian. And you guys can discuss the pros and cons and how it is you want to go about it. The last tidbit of information I am going to provide to you. For me personally, if I have a patient that I'm seeing earlier in the week, since I work Monday through Saturday, I'm a little bit more flexible with seeing something kind of taking a slow approach to it versus if we're heading into the weekend. And then if something happens on Saturday night or Sunday, one of my clients has to make the decision, then they got to go to the emergency clinic. So if that's the case with your particular veterinarian or your particular case, I am usually more aggressive when we're heading into. You might have to end up at the emergency clinic versus in this particular case, we have, I think today is Tuesday and we can go ahead and watch Bella today and tomorrow and see how she does. And if she's getting worse, then we can look at doing more tests to see if this is something that's more serious. You guys found this video helpful, Please give us a thumbs up. It's super helpful if you guys subscribe. So please hit that subscribe button. And if you know somebody who needs to see this, please share it with them. Thanks for watching. Have a great day and be safe. It.
