Hi

Can anyone please advise on this problem? My 11 month old male Border Collie seems to get fairly bad diahorrea with occasional sickness approximately once a month, and he does look a little skinny. Is a change of diet in order? Any ideas what I should do? I will to the vet as a last resort, but they'll probably tell me to change the diet and charge me £50 for the priviledge!

Thanks for your help

CG

Hi C/G, it may well be his diet, but before you can say it is other things have to be ruled out first. No matter how certain I think I may be with anything troubling my dogs I still take them the vet so he can check them out, if only to confirm my suspicions. Recurring problems, such as diorrhea, vomiting etc are not always caused by diet, even tho changing it may help for awhile. It sounds like he`s had it for a couple of months now & he`s still young, I`d take him the vet first to rule out any other causes.
Christine, Spain.

Hiya,

If you say its a recoccuring problem and only happening once a month I would get a vet to see he dog. If it was diet I would have thought it happened consistently.
Do you give the dog anything different to eat prior to this happening?
I would recommend maybe giving the dog chicken and rice for a while as this should help the diarhoea. This is what I give my lab if his business gets a little soft.

Good luck

Hi

Thanks for the advice!

Well, he does tend a eat a lot of horse poo, but I shouldn't think that's the cause of the problem.

I'm just going to go to the vet. I think it would put my mind at rest.

CG

Fingers crossed eh? I'm so scared!!!!!!!!

Just a thought but if a horse that leaves the horse poo that he eats has been wormed recently that could cause him problems as a lot of collies are badly affected by the wormer used for horses.

I can recall reading or hearing about a number of dogs that died after licking the syringes used to dose the horses in a yard.

Ivermectin is known to cause bad effects in collie type dogs and others, and I beleive this is a common vermifuge for livestock.

Got him checked by the vet and he is totally fine. He might just have had e coli or salmonella but he hasn't had the diahorrea for a while ! :)