I’m writing with good news about Kraken. At an age of nearly 3 years, he is now having solid poo.
Is this an NSFW posting to the StinkyBlog? Maybe so. As I’ve mentioned before, this is a safe place for topics relating to dog poo. Poo is a fact of life for anyone with dogs, and for those of us with lots of dogs, it is an active discussion topic, especially during mealtime.
The situation is that we got Kraken as a puppy from a neighborhood musher. (“Kraken is going to be a champion! He comes from an excellent bloodline. Usually I would try to sell such a dog, but since I know you take such great care of your dogs, I am willing to give him to you for free!”) His sisters are Siren and Medusa. The girls are super dogs, especially Siren.
Kraken has not proven to be a great sled dog, so far. He is gangly and doesn’t pull hard in the harness. He has also been fraught with mushy diarrhea, since we had him.
We tried everything, based on multiple visits to the vet in Fairbanks. We put him on several special diets. We treated with a few antibiotics and at least three wormers This was not stress-related, since it happened year-round (some dogs get the squirts when they are working in harness). His diet was ok, and we never found any sign of allergies. We had his poo examined by the vet several times. It remained mushy, year round, essentially every day (multiple times per day).
This was not much fun to pick up in the dog yard.
To slightly mitigate the mushy poos, we added a 1/4 teaspoon of powdered pro-biotics, and 1 tsp of psyllium, to every meal. This helped the symptoms, somewhat.
And then, we moved to L’Amable. Dr. Singh spotted a parasite, coccidia, in Stubby’s poo (see stinkypup.net/2015/07/30/parasites-in-ontario/). We treated the entire kennel, and suddenly Kraken’s poos firmed up.
Nearly a month later, he is still doing fine. Evidently, he is cured! I don’t know why the Fairbanks vet didn’t spot coccidia, or whether the treatment somehow fixed other problems. We don’t think there are any other things that have changed that might result in Kraken’s poo transformation.
Later in the year, we will find out whether Kraken’s potential as a sled dog is re-ignited, as a result of his improved poo. Stay tuned…