All right, this is it. I've pulled Choya out of her weekly full-day playschool, permanently. The mega diarrhea that culminated in vet-prescribed meds was resolved by Christmas, and I thought that was it. But no. Come January 2022, two weeks after the antibiotics were done, I noticed a pattern of Choya getting the runs every Thursday after school on Wednesdays. On the weeks that she didn't go to school, her poop was solid gold.
So I keep a 'Choya's Diarrhea Log'. Since last October, the data significantly pointed to a change of gastrointestinal flora to food (easily sorted), as well as to the bacteria in the school's environment. She did fine in school for two years, and then I don't know what changed in the equation. This is not a dog who eats everything in sight. She likes to nibble on leaves, lick grass and roll around in soil and mud, but she won't lick or eat things off of the ground. Of course the school checked in with the other dogs' owners. It's in their interest to do so. No other dog took ill this badly. (Although a few DMed me on IG that their dogs also took ill after school some time late last year and this year too.) That's a relief.
It's sad because I've come to trust the school's responsible handlers, and Choya does have loads of fun in school. I don't know if it's the water in the pool (of which I'm told that the ratios remain unchanged, and swimming doesn't seem to affect other dogs much), but without the swimming component, there's no point for her to go to this school anymore. Her health comes first. We do have an alternative for pack walks, and I can work a bit harder to take her to the pool for swims.
Choya also needed meds this round to battle the bacteria infection — antibiotics (Metronidazole, again), antidiarrheals (Direa), a gut soother (Omeprazole) plus a dewormer (Drontal) and probiotics. I was relieved that all through the runs and her first two doses of meds, there was no nausea, no vomitting, and she continued eating and drinking.
I groaned at the dewormer pill. That would cause diarrhea, if not vomitting. Her poop formed the next morning after the meds went in, but at night, she had the runs again three hours after ingesting half of a pill. Ugh. But fine, she hasn't had a dewormer since puppyhood. I'll let that go. Then there’s that fecal PCR to be done. The challenge is in getting a sufficiently unpolluted sample to have a fecal PCR done. I haven’t succeeded. Hahahah. I’d catch a lump of her solid poop next week.
We got the full blood work done (a Complete Blood Test, CPC), an ultrasound, and a urinalysis. While the results were inconclusive to a plausible reason to her diarrhea, they thankfully cleared her of any serious underlying illness or anything to do with her pancreas, kidneys and liver. This episode made me realize that it's definitely not the food. I've identified most of her food triggers to mild diarrhea. This episode is again, an overgrowth of bacteria that she can't fight off.
Her doctors and I believe that she has got Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) alongside stress colitis. When they collide, then the inflammation in her GI tract flares and shitsplosions happen. We won't know for sure unless we get tissue biopsies done. It's not necessary at this point.
My heart ached when I saw the little girl zip around in confusion from stomachaches and spasms, hunched over with shitsplosions. Yet she knew how to wake me to tell me that she was in pain, confused and frightened, and to ask to go out to poop. Oh my darling girl. That was one hell of two nights. If I was exhausted, she must have felt worse to feel so ill and need to poop every three hours. She is so smol and cannot afford to be dehydrated or lose any more weight. The meds worked immediately. She was so much better after two doses, and her poop started to firm up in the next few days, and after the dewormer pill did its job.
It has been a rough and looooong weekend. I’m glad that I didn’t make any dates that I couldn’t cancel, or loathe to cancel. I dared not power through with coffee. Being overly caffeinated wouldn’t just increase the chances of another episode of vertigo, it would also interfere with my ability to fall asleep in 60 seconds and wake at an instant if the girl needed me. I hit the gym, ate well, went easy on alcohol and simply soldiered through on an accumulated 12 hours of sleep over four days. May we see a silver lining today.
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