You may remember that for the past couple of months, my dogs have had trouble eating. It started with Alice, and we had to start hand feeding her. Then Felix stopped wanting to eat, too. And last week, Hestia stopped wanting to eat.
They seem pretty OK in other respects, a little less energy so I’m working Felix less, but overall happy. They’ve been drinking and peeing fine, and mostly pooping OK, though Felix occasionally has been having really sticky poops that necessitate butt baths.
We’ve tried changing up the recipe used to make their food, feeding them canned food, feeding more treats, and cooking lots and lots of chicken breast for them to eat. We’ve kept them eating about as much as they should, a little less than we’d like, by feeding frequent meals and doing a lot of hand feeding and feeding baked chicken.
When it was just Alice, we did lots of blood testing and a barium test. But when we realized Felix’s symptoms were progressing the same way, the vet thought there must be something going on in the environment that’s making them both ill. And of course with Hestia joining in last week, that clinched it– something in the environment is causing them to be sick.
Two weeks ago, the vet took a sample of Felix’s stool and did a gut microbiome test. It came back yesterday and showed he had an overgrowth of three harmful bacteria and was lacking several good bacteria that keep the bad bacteria at bay. The symptoms of this usually involve diarrhea as well, but luckily my dogs didn’t really have that.
The treatment is a fecal transplant and supplementing with a particular probiotic that fights the bad bacteria. A fecal transplant is just like it sounds. They take poop from a healthy dog, dry it, put it in capsules, and you feed it to your dog to repopulate (re-poop-ulate?) the gut with appropriate bacteria. We’re also supposed to increase the protein in the diet to starve out the bad bacteria which feed mostly on carbohydrates.
Since all three dogs have the same symptoms, and it can be spread through poop, and they all poop in the same patio area, the vet said to go ahead and treat all three dogs this way. The good news is that it can be treated! The bad news is it is expensive. The fecal transplant and special probiotic was almost $250, and for all three dogs, that is only a 20 day supply.
We’ll re-evaluate every 20 days, but it’s possible that one or more of them might need to be on fecal transplants and/or special probiotics the rest of their lives. Hopefully not, as I don’t know how we’ll afford that! But that is a bridge to be crossed once we have these guys feeling better.
Tam drove me up to the vet’s office today (Hestia had to get a heart worm test and yearly bloodwork anyway) and we picked up the fecal transplant and probiotic. Tam has been instructed to give lots of high protein treats to the dogs every time they come in from pottying and as a bedtime snack. I’m really going to have to twist her arm to get her to agree to that LOL! She is the treat queen in this house!
We gave the dogs their pills (fecal transplant) and powder (probiotic) in peanut butter tonight. We used just a very little bit for Alice since she has pancreatitis and isn’t supposed to have peanut butter. But we didn’t know how else to get it in her. So I need to research low fat tasty things to give pills with for Alice. The dogs took their pills and ate their powder well, so that was good.
We should start to see results in a couple weeks! Yay, can’t wait! It’ll be nice to have hungry dogs again, though I have to say I haven’t missed the barking as I’m preparing food all that much LOL! I hope everything will be poop-tastic, and I’ll keep you updated!
I have read up a lot on this procedure it so fabulous! Good luck pups hope this works. I wish the could do something like it for people like me who suffer from stomach issues. The idea of eating someone else poop kind of grosses me out but if it helps it’s worth it.
Also I am trying to wean myself, with doctors permission, of these darn mental pills. She said because I take such a low dose I could just stop taking them, but I am doing one at a time like every other day, every two days, every three days, till I get to a week a part for two weeks them I will just quit and start the same way on the next one. It feels good I can finally get rid of more medication. I will always have a brain injury from the car wreck but I have my SD for that, heart issues, and mobility issues.
They have gut microbiome tests for humans, and do the same stuff as treatment. I just called my GI doctor and asked if I could get it covered by insurance since I could have picked it up from the dogs or vice versa. If not, I’m thinking of paying out of pocket for it.
That’s good news. I Worry myself sick if my dog isn’t hungry at meal time. Did the doc say what caused the drop in good bacteria? This info will help others so thank you for sharing. Miss you guys!
Tami and River