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Dog Health
Blood In Stool

Dog Health Blood in Stool is explained on this page plus what you should do if you notice this sign and symptom with your pup.

Healthy dog poop is Brown, moist, not too hard and not too soft. For example, too hard indicates that your dog is consitpated and needs to drink more water.

Some problems and causes that you might notice with your dogs poop:

• Hard Poop- indicates constipation, dog needs to drink more.
• Mucus around its poop (could be nothing, but may be parisites or blockage),
• Small white rice particles (worms),
• Dark black colour (indicates old blood)
• Bright red colour (indicates fresh blood),

This means that your dogs poop is trying to tell you something. Since you have to pickup your dogs poop when cleaning the yard, keep this poop, and take it to the vets.

Your dog health blood in stool can indicate a serious complication (it might be minor), but you want to make sure that if it is something serious that its treated right away!

Here are many of the diagnosis that can cause dog health blood in stool:

Red Poop or red streaks (Hematochezia)

Means blood is fresh and so the blood is probably coming from the lower intestines or rectum.

Causes could include:

• Parvo virus (usually found in puppies), usually includes symptoms of vomiting, diarrhoea, lethargy, loss of appetite... Deadly. Take your dog to the vet right away.
• Parasites (Whipworm, Hookworm, roundworms). Easily treated with De-wormers from the vet.
• Food Problems and bacteria (spoiled foods, food intolerance or allergy) - other symptoms include vomiting and diarrhea
• Hemorrhagic gastro-enteritis (HGE) - unknown cause, but needs to be treated with IV and medications. May have diarrhoea and vomiting.
• Injuries to the Rectum - if yoru dog has eaten something sharp such as a bone that you didn't notice, or perhaps got into the garbage, these will come out the other end and may scrape the rectum. Check to see if there are rectal injuries or damage to the anal glands.

Black Tarry Poop (Melena) - usually more serious

Blood is coming from higher in the intestines or the stomach.

• Use of NSAIDS (Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflamatory drugs - such as Advil) - just like in people these cause bleeding ulcers. This is serious, make sure you tell your vet if your dog has taken NSAIDS.
• Pepto-Bismol - this turns poop black. Take your dog off of this and the poop should become normal.
• Rat Poison - this is VERY serious. Black tarry stools is one symptom. Take to vet immediately.
• Blood Clot Disorder - other symptoms include purple-y skin (bleeding under skin).
• Swallowing blood - your dog may have a mouth injury or have licked a bleeding wound.
• Bleeding Tumour (such as colon cancer) - your dog may have cancer somewhere.
• Internal trauma - if your dog has internal bleeding, then this may come out in their feces.
• Irritable Bowel Syndrome - essentially this means that the dog has a particularly sensitive bowel and the body reacts to many things in it's life such as diet and stress by reactions in the bowel.
• Gastritis - essentially it is a stomach flu, but if left untreated can lead to bloody diarrhoea.

Many of these diagnosis can be quite serious, yet if caught early, easily treatable, so you want to make sure that you are able to treat them as soon as possible. Bring your dog to the vet along with the stool sample to rule out any serious disease and so your dog can be treated as soon as possible.

An ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure. Treat the problem early and save money and heart-ache.

The above advice is not meant to replace veterinarian advice or stool testing. If you find blood in your dogs stool. Take it to the vet along with a stool sample.

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