
Colitis is inflammation of the mucus membrane in the rectum and colon. What causes one dog to have it rather than another is not known but many flare ups are caused by certain foods or stress related. The cells in the bowel, and the mouth, replace themselves faster than any others in the body so it is always worth resting the bowel with no solid food at all for 24 hours to allow the mucus membrane to recoat itself if that fails you will probably need treatment to reduce the inflammation, usually with steroids, as a bad attack can lead to haemorrhage, in acute cases perhaps perforation and after many years it is possible it may give rise to carcinoma of the colon although the dogs life span is such that that is not very common at all.
If things don't settle down in 24 hours you also need to consider infection.
If you dog does have chronic colitis I would not worry too much, well managed there is not reason why it should not live to 15 as mine did :)