My pup Walden just turned 4 recently. For the majority of the first two years of his life, he was on a Nutro chicken food, then a Blue Buffalo duck food. Then he started having issues with acid reflux, throwing up bile almost every single day. The vet recommended Hills I/D, I switched to that, and for almost two years Walden’s issues we’re almost non-existent (bile thrown up once a week at max). Back in November, he had what I believe I’ve researched and understood as an HGE. He suddenly had started to not be able to control his pooping, and was vomiting and pooping everywhere constantly. The vet found inflammation in his intestines in the x-rays and put him on Fortiflora and Metronidazole for I believe 10 days. I’d never had him on the Metronidazole, so I started the Fortiflora and was trying to start the Metro a couple days later over the weekend so I would be home and could see how he reacted to it. Well the next day the presence of blood appeared in the vomit and poop and he was very weak, so I rushed him to the vet immediately and they gave him a shot of penicillin and fluids I believe. He immediately started getting better and I finished up the antibiotics and Fortiflora.
After finally somewhat getting over the fear it was going to happen again, this February I started trying to transition him to a Hill’s Science Diet with chicken and after just a couple days of transitioning, I came home after Walden had been acting normal for days and he’d pooped all over the house again, this time however the blood was immediately there. I knew it had to be the same issue (even though the vet never found out the original issue) so I rushed him back there. They, like me, assumed it was the same issue (although they said the food change triggered it which I say is BS because that didn’t explain November), so rather than hundreds of dollars in the same tests as last time that showed nothing, gave him the same treatment, along with a diet of purely chicken and rice until his poop started firming up. I noticed after a few days his poop was still extremely runny, so instead of waiting, I started moving him back to his normal food. Poops started getting a ton better after less than a day off the rice.
Once he recovered from that, in March I went into overdrive. I’ve got to figure out what’s wrong with my sweet boy. He’d been regurgitating his food every so often and just plain throwing it up a few other times, but otherwise seemed okay. I brought him into my vet (Thursday) before things got to the emergency point this time. I’d done my research beforehand and I was down to a few ideas, with IBD, a food allergy, or an ulcer being the top ideas. The vet agreed and figured the way he’d been acting, especially with his increased issues of throwing up bile (he couldn’t go more than 5 hours without food), that it seemed like an ulcer. She prescribed Sulcralfate and Prilosec, along with weekly vitamin B12 shots for 6 weeks then we could re-evaluate if those should continue or not. Walden got worse quicker than he got better within that next week. To a point that he wasn’t keeping his food down at all and throwing up way too much. I went to my vet clinic Saturday, my normal vet not being there. They said his anal glands looked infected but otherwise he looked fine. I asked if there was anything I could do to help. She suggested the I/D low fat and told me to “go ahead and just put him straight on it, it’s the same thing just lower fat”. Okay I’m no vet but I’m not an idiot, my dog is already extremely sick, I’m not adding an immediate transition to a completely different food (which by the way, did have completely different ingredients) that I don’t even think is going to work. Well they did nothing that day so I figured I’d keep him on his meds and pray he got better. Sunday rolled around and he was looking worse. He didn’t want to jump around like normal, refused to eat, was constantly throwing up, and I couldn’t stand it. I took him to the emergency vet and they did some blood tests and everything looked fairly normal, so I had the choice to have him stay overnight and see a specialist and get an ultrasound in the morning (almost $2k), or they could give him a shot of anti nausea medicine to get him through the night for me to get him into my normal vet the next day. I had already spent $1,500 since November at this point and my savings was almost gone, so I had to go with just the anti-nausea shot. After he had that, he did much better throughout the night, and acted fairly normal the next day. He slowly started to get back to normal but just couldn’t last very long without eating still (feeding routine was 8am, 1pm, 6pm, 11pm).
When he’s gotten the blood tests at the emergency vet, they had noticed some levels that pointed towards the possibility of Addison’s Disease. This in my mind would be awful, but also I knew it was manageable in most dogs and it would finally explain all his problems, especially after he’d acted so much peppier with a shot of cortisone the day before his test. Well, one expensive test later with my vet and unfortunately it came back negative.
My vet then referred me to a digestive specialist because that was really next steps, we’d exhausted a lot of things. The specialist was wonderful, but the options were a vitamin blood test and ultrasound, which was going to be almost $1k. At this point I’d spent my entire savings. And trust me, I’d go into debt if I knew I’d be finding a the answer, but I was so scared another test would go by and still nothing, with what I knew would have to be an endoscopy next, that there’s no way I could afford. The specialist was great and completely understood, and said really the top 2 things she thought it could be (which I agree still to this day) were a food allergy or IBD. We decided to treat it like a food allergy and she gave me Hills Z/D.
Well, great news, I started transitioning Walden to Z/D over the course of 2 weeks (after the HGE incident I wasn’t taking any chances of switching him over too quickly). He started acting better as soon as he started getting that Z/D in his food (even though it was still mixed with his old). I then started checking out the ingredients more in I/D and I presumed that the #1 ingredient of rice and the main protein of chicken were what was the issue more than likely, because I just had a feeling he was very allergic to rice and I’ve always thought he has a slight sensitivity to chicken. A couple days ago he was fully transitioned to Z/D and ever since then he’s been acting much better. No more getting sick throughout the nights, he’s able to lay on his back and not choke on acid reflux coming up, and not to mention he WANTS to eat his food for the first time in at least 2.5 years.
The only problem now is, I started noticing yesterday morning that his poop had a darkish mucus in it. I was worried it may be blood but chaulked it up to my overreacting. Well his second poop that day definitely had a presence of some sort of red mucus in it that looked like blood. It wasn’t much, normal pet parents probably wouldn’t of seen it, but I inspect Walden’s poops very carefully because of his past issues (I’m sure my neighbors are disgusted watching me carefully dig through 2-3 times a day). When I moved it around though, it definitely had more of just a mucus look than redness, just like a normal stomach irritation. He had only a little bit in his last night poop, but the same thing again in his morning poop today.
I plan on talking to my vet again tomorrow about next steps, but I wanted some advice as well. Could this be his anal glands still being infected and causing small bits of blood (and I mean they’re very small, almost unoticeable… And his poops aren’t overly soft to where I would think this was another HGE yet)? Or could this be just because of the transition to his new food and it will more than likely go away? He’s acting completely normal and eating/drinking great or I’d be rushing him off to the emergency vet obviously (I even called them yesterday and they agreed to just keep an eye out for any worsening symptoms for now).
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