Chronic bloody diarrhea / Colitis

[EAO76]

I am coming to you for a little advice. Our rescue just got a new girl in that has sever Chronic bloody diarrhea (per the owner it’s been going on since at least August so 5+months) and all of the usual treatments have not really seemed to help at all. I'm sort of at a loss for what to try next & I am having a hard time finding anyone to foster (because of the special needs). Does anyone have any tips, tricks, advice for dealing with this condition? We have already tried flagyl, the duck/ potato food, and a few of the other usual methods. We just started to home cook. I started w/ plain mashed potatoes since that has given me success with other diarrhea dogs but so far no improvement. Any wisdom you can share would be appreciated.

[gmacleod]

Would you consider trying her on a raw diet? Some colitis sufferers can eventually cope with kibble - but it is a minority (most colitis sufferers cannot consume kibble ever again), and rarely the serious ulcerative colitis sufferers. And to a lesser extent, the same is true of homecooking - especially if you're feeding things like potatoes, sweet potatoes, or (frankly) any other such unnatural starchy carbohydrates.

Dogs simply aren't designed to digest that sort of thing very well, so in order to do it at all, they need to have that food sitting around in their stomachs for unnatural periods of time. And in that time, their digestive acids are being produced to try to break down the carbs. This is where the problem lies If you have a stomach ulcer, the last thing you need is to have high levels of stomach acids for long periods making the ulcers worse. Instead, they need time to heal, which means easily digested food. That means dumping the carbs, and instead just feeding the food the dog is designed to cope with (meat/fat/bones) that he'll deal with more quickly. Raw is easiest - but if you really don't want to try that, then at least dump the carbs from the homecooked. Just give him a stew made up of meat/bone/offal/fat - NO vegetables.

[EAO76]

Thanks Gmac! I hear you but we are reluctant to put a dog that is for adoption on raw just because many people that are adopting wont continue that regimen. But at least we can cook for her to settle things a bit. I will try to update this post if I find something that works. I know many Boxers suffer from this condition.

[Jan]

Poor girl! Please try her on a raw diet. It can be a miracle cure for colitis in some cases. I am sure that you would be able to find someone to adopt her that would feed a raw diet. Lots of people feed raw in California. I would adopt her, in a heartbeat, if I lived in there.

[SherylM]

This sounds just like our little Lucy, the rescue boxer. She is a puppy mill gal and was completely emaciated, had kennel cough, round worms and giardia. She came to us as a foster in August with horrible bloody diarreha. After many, many rounds of tylocin and flagyl and medication for round worms and giardia, nothing really seemed to work. The rescue didn't want her on raw either for the same reason.

Lucy is now being treated for hystiocytic ulcerative colitis, this type of colitis mainly effects boxers (go figure). There are expensive tests that can be done to determine if this is in fact what the pup is suffering from but my vet just went right ahead and prescribed the medication, hoping that it would work. Within 2 days Lucy's stools had started to firm up. Within one week there was no more blood and her stools were perfect. The medication she is on is Baytril 50mgs two times per day and flagyl 500mgs two times per day, based on her current weight of 40lbs. The baytril is expensive but worth every penny. The overall complete change in Lucy since being on this medication is amazing. Prior to this she always seems depressed and tired. Not any more..my lil girl is full of life and bouncing around like a crazy boxer puppy. I really believe this saved her life. The treatment is long term, 8 weeks, then weaning off with the hope that there is no reoccurrence. Due to Lucy's weakened immune system she is likely to have this problem throughout her life time, but at least now we know what it is and how to treat it.

And as a side note - we have adopted Lucy and she is now on a raw diet and doing wonderfully on it. Perhaps you can try your rescue dog on a dehydrated raw, I think its a lot better than kibble and easier to transition if the adoptive family wants her on kibble. My guys eat the whole prey raw diet but we also sometimes give SoJo's complete dehydrated raw (turkey and sweet potatoes).

[SherylM]

And I should add the Lucy is also on a probiotic and digestive enzymes.

[EAO76]

Originally Posted by SherylM

This sounds just like our little Lucy, the rescue boxer. She is a puppy mill gal and was completely emaciated, had kennel cough, round worms and giardia. She came to us as a foster in August with horrible bloody diarreha. After many, many rounds of tylocin and flagyl and medication for round worms and giardia, nothing really seemed to work. The rescue didn't want her on raw either for the same reason.

Lucy is now being treated for hystiocytic ulcerative colitis, this type of colitis mainly effects boxers (go figure). There are expensive tests that can be done to determine if this is in fact what the pup is suffering from but my vet just went right ahead and prescribed the medication, hoping that it would work. Within 2 days Lucy's stools had started to firm up. Within one week there was no more blood and her stools were perfect. The medication she is on is Baytril 50mgs two times per day and flagyl 500mgs two times per day, based on her current weight of 40lbs. The baytril is expensive but worth every penny. The overall complete change in Lucy since being on this medication is amazing. Prior to this she always seems depressed and tired. Not any more..my lil girl is full of life and bouncing around like a crazy boxer puppy. I really believe this saved her life. The treatment is long term, 8 weeks, then weaning off with the hope that there is no reoccurrence. Due to Lucy's weakened immune system she is likely to have this problem throughout her life time, but at least now we know what it is and how to treat it.

And as a side note - we have adopted Lucy and she is now on a raw diet and doing wonderfully on it. Perhaps you can try your rescue dog on a dehydrated raw, I think its a lot better than kibble and easier to transition if the adoptive family wants her on kibble. My guys eat the whole prey raw diet but we also sometimes give SoJo's complete dehydrated raw (turkey and sweet potatoes).

Thanks Sheryl! I have found several other promising success stories about Baytril being a miracle cure for Boxer Colitis. We are about to start this therapy but to save some money we have the human form Ciprofloxacin. I just read on the Baytril website that; “Compared to Baytril® Ciprobay® therefore is not a suitable alternative for therapy of canine patients”. FAQs do you know is this true? Or do they just want us to spend the extra $$$ on their product.

Our vet is the one that wrote the Rx so I assume he wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t think it was equivalent but then again not all vets know everything. I have searched & searched and everywhere else seems to say that the two drugs can be used interchangeably. Only the Baytril website says otherwise.

anyone know?

[SherylM]

My vet, along with one other vet she consulted with, advised me that Baytril was the only drug, that it wasn't interchangable. How true is that, I'm not sure. I do have a friend that is extremely knowledable regarding doggie meds and I will check with her in the New Year. Money was an issue for us as well but quite frankly, given the results we have had with the Baytril, I would not change it for anything at this point. As I said, it is worth every penny. Lucy has a whole new lease on life and far be it for me to test the waters! I will pray that you have the same success. Poor pups, it must be so hard on them!

[SherylM]

Sorry, I couldn't come up with any other information than you already have regarding Ciprofloxin. Have you started treatment yet? Is it working? I'm very curious to know since if it does work I may try it for Lucy is she has a reoccurrence down the road.

[EAO76]

We were able to find Lucy (that’s her name too) the most AMAZING adoptive home over the weekend. A wonderful family that just lost their beloved boxer on Dec 28th contacted us looking to adopt. They were willing to take Lucy with her colitis & all. It truly was an amazing blessing. Anyway I am working closely with them to get Lucy on track. Per the rescue’s direction they have started her on the Ciprofloxacin.

This is what I found (written by a vet) in regards to the Ciprofloxacin:


Baytril (Rx) would be enrofloxacin if sold generically. At the present time enrofloxacin is not available as a generic medication, to the best of my knowledge. Ciprofloxacin is the human pharmaceutical Cipro (Rx), which is also a fluoroquinolone class antibiotic. It is available generically. It is a good equivalent drug for enrofloxacin for an interesting reason that helps to point out one of the major problems with using generic drugs. Ciprofloxacin is processed, at least in dogs, into enrofloxacin in the body. Approximately 75% of ciprofloxacin becomes enrofloxacin once it has been processed by the liver in the first pass through the circulation. So when ciprofloxacin is used in dogs, should the dose be increased 25% in order to compensate for the difference? As far as I know, no one really knows the answer to that question with certainty. We assume that might be the case based on our knowledge of how the drug is processed but there isn’t a lot of money to do studies of generic drugs since there isn’t much incentive for the drug company to study a medication that anyone can produce. So when we use ciprofloxacin, it is with some uncertainty about how well it really will work. As you can imagine, if the cost difference for a 20 lb. dog is $80 there is huge incentive to use ciprofloxacin when the dog weighs 120 lbs. and a fluoroquinolone antibiotic seems necessary and the cost difference may be $200, or more. So far, ciprofloxacin has worked as well as enrofloxacin in our practice and we are reasonably confident that itís use is warranted but I think you can see where a very cautious veterinarian might feel very uncomfortable making the switch.

So the bottom line is it might be 25% less effective but its not going to hurt to try it. In my opinion we should just buy the Baytril. I am all for spending the extra money to get the quickest results…but it’s not my call. However if after several days we don’t see good results I will fork the money out of my own pocket if I have to. I just want to see this girl get well.

I addition to the Ciprofloxacin we have also started her on an Rx diet. The prescription food is called Royal Canin HP 19. Like all Rx diets the ingredients are not good but the reason I have chosen this food is because there was another rescue dog (Leila) that had very sever colitis. Her family worked for a long time to solve her issues. And after trying everything (from home cooking, to meds, to Chinese herbs), this food literally healed her in less than a week. This was a dog that was poring blood. Of course all dogs are different and there is no guarantee that Lucy will respond the same way but it’s certainly worth a try.

Also I am not too concerned about the ingredients because the food is not meant to be used long term. Leila was weaned off of it within a few months. She now eats regular food & her colitis has never returned (it’s been more then a year).

The one caveat is I wanted to try the food for a week & then if it did not work try the medicine. That way if she started to heal we would know which was working but my input was not appreciated. To me it just seemed like common sense. The dog’s condition had been ignored for 5months so a few more days wasn’t going to hurt but what can I do?

Anyway the family emailed me & said there is a lot less blood & that she only pooped 3times yesterday!!! (The 1st day she arrived she was pooping so many times they lost count). However the stool is still very runny. It certainly sounds promising though!

How soon did you see a difference in your Lucy?

I will continue to update this post. Hopefully sharing Lucy’s story will help others.

[bmwinter]

My dog went on baytril for 8 weeks (apparently a new sucessful course -as they now think the disease is an overgrowth of bacteria) also changed her diet to a low residue kibble - which she will stay on for life. SO FAR SO GOOD.

[Independence]

I wish there was a way to donate unused meds for dogs. I have at least 3 weeks of baytril at home that Indy never got to use.