First and foremost, I am flattered and humbled at the folks who come to the Kennel and ask me if I write these articles and tell me that they appreciate the information, the best compliment thus far is a young lady who boards with us and explained that she even has some of the information to educate her children. So I thought it was time I wrote about the subject that all Dog Owners deal with but never really talk about and that is Dog Poop, yes that nasty side effect of having a dog in your life. I spend early mornings with staff at the Kennel cleaning, we have anywhere from fifty to seventy dogs at times and yes we have lots of it. There we are sometimes as early as 4 AM moving our K9 guests out to larger exercise runs so they can start their morning right and going back to the Kennels where they spent the night and one at a time clean and sanitize and as I have been interacting with Dog Poop since my initial start with Dogs in the Army in 1970 and have dealt with it since then I consider myself somewhat of an expert.
Overall you can tell a tremendous amount about a dogs health by what comes out of the south end and most Pet Owners just don’t pay that much attention to that, too busy thinking about what to do with it once we pick it up. In the Kennel we can usually move rather quickly, picking up the beds, cleaning the beds, bowls and then mopping and sanitizing the floor, but then we encounter those kennel runs were the poop is soft, many times the dogs have stepped in it and we put in the extra time and effort to make sure that it is clean. We also monitor this as it provides staff an indicator if a dog might be overly stressed in its Kennel stay or might even be coming down with something. All that being said, it is usually not anything like that, it is the food that the dog is eating, keep in mind, over ninety percent of Pet Owners who bring in their Pets, also bring in the food they normally feed their dog, we actually recommend this as it cuts down the stress on the dog when they are away from home and in addition changes in food have a tendency to create loose stools in that food transition. As I have a high level of curiosity in this area I usually will go back and check what food the Pet Owner is feeding their Pet. Though I may get in trouble here, (my wife tells me I should keep some things to myself) but if you have one of the two “P’s” you most likely will have this problem, “P” as in Purina or “P” as in Pedigree, Pets on these foods have a tendency to have loose stools and seem to put out of allot of excess.
That being said I am not saying they are the only brands that seem to have this end result, but many of you have spoken to me at our intake counter and have heard me say this same thing. Don’t get me wrong, the dog food business in the U.S. is atwenty-four billion dollar business, yes, that is twenty four with a “B” billion dollar industry and is expected to grow to thirty billion so there are so many choices, too many choices. Those of us who love our Pets have to put in the work to get around all of the marketing fluff and get the facts and make sure our Pets are actually creating that solid base in their life, that solid base of eating the right foods so they can live healthy and happy. Remember they can’t read the labels or do the research. Back to the original subject matter here, “Poop”.
Keep In mind…..
- An excellent way to stay on top of your dog’s health is to monitor what comes out of her/him, otherwise known as feces/stool/poop. It’s important to know your dog’s “normal” when it comes to poop
- The most obvious symptom of a health problem in dogs is diarrhea, which has several characteristics that vary depending on the cause
- There are several potential causes of diarrhea in dogs, ranging from a change in diet to cancer.
There is no fun here, but it is an important and many times obvious way to check on your dog’s health.
Remember you can always discuss Poop with us at the front counter at RSK.
