Hetty and the bad tummy

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS DESCRIPTIONS OF POO. IF YOU DON’T LIKE READING ABOUT POO, YOU SHOULD PROBABLY GIVE IT A MISS.

It was early one morning in June that Hetty, our young cockapoo dog, whined outside my bedroom door. The only reason she whines outside the bedroom door is if she’s very desperate for the toilet. So I took her into the garden.

I fed her rice and prescription ‘digestive care’ food for the rest of the day and then she was fine.

Exactly a week later, the same happened again. This time it lingered for a bit longer, so I kept her on the digestive care food for a few more days. Exactly a week after that, it happened again.

And that was how our summer went on…

For five or six weeks, Hetty had almost permanent diaorrhea. Although I’m pleased to say she didn’t get me out of bed many days. She was only going to the toilet about as many times as she usually does in a day, but when she did go, it just wasn’t right. Sometimes it was completely liquid. Sometimes it was partly solid, but coated in mucus. Sometimes there were bits of blood. When I picked it up, I usually had to pick up a big bunch of grass too, because that was the only way to get it all up.

We’d taken Hetty off wet food when she was about four or five months old because we weren’t sure that it agreed with her tummy. But after going into season, followed by a phantom pregnancy, Hetty was eating next to nothing. So we brought wet food back in around March this year. By July, I was feeling very uncertain about the wet food again. So we stopped it. And we cut right down on treats.

Sometimes I would wean her gradually off the digestive care food and back onto normal food, but it never lasted more than a few days.

I took her to the vet. They were happy that she was hydrated and lively. They suggested poo tests – at a cost of £85 – to look for infection. I would have to test over four consecutive days and keep the poo cold (without putting it in the fridge).

I resisted that for a few days, but then realised it had to be done. I got one of those very cheap cool bags from the supermarket for taking frozen food home. I put fresh ice in it every day and kept it in the garage.

We went to Padstow and only took the digestive care food with us. Halfway through the holiday, Hetty was suddenly OK. Then I got the results of the tests – no infection.

After a couple of weeks, there was a small blip and a couple of days back on the special food. But she was OK for over a month.

People had said to us that some dogs don’t get on with chicken. So much dog food is based on chicken. Even if it’s called beef, it turns out that it’s 40% chicken and 10% beef. We started giving her dry food with no chicken, although she still had a small number of treats containing chicken.

Then at the start of September, she needed a poo in the middle of the night. This happened six days out of seven – as early as 1am and as late as 5am. There were two nights when she got me out twice.

I knew there were still more tests the vet could do and it was time to get them done. At the back of my mind, I was worried that she might be seriously ill, although I didn’t even dare say it out loud, in case admitting my fears made it happen.

Again, the vet was satisfied with how lively she was and that she wasn’t dehydrated. But she agreed that going to the toilet in the night wasn’t right – nor was the quantity of mucus in the poo.

This time, she would be having an ultrasound scan and blood tests. We had to wait over a week to get the tests done. In the meantime, the vet gave her a probiotic, which settled her stomach a bit and at least stopped her needing the toilet in the middle of the night.

The digestive care food is based on chicken. I mentioned this to the vet who said that it is so processed (not the word she used, but a similar word) to be good for their stomachs, that even a dog who can’t eat chicken is fine with it.

I’m not sure that Hetty got that memo. In the week until the tests, she was sick on the Monday, the Wednesday and the Friday (which also happened to be my 50th birthday!). My husband decided there was no point in feeding her food that was supposed to be good for her if it wasn’t good for her. So we fed her a Lily’s Kitchen salmon based dry food (with absolutely no chicken in it).

I wasn’t allowed to give her anything to eat on the morning of her scan. They said they might need to sedate her, which of course they did. I dropped her off at 8.45am and didn’t get to pick her up until 5.30pm. She was VERY happy to see me!

Her stomach had been shaved even more than it was when she was spayed.

But her scan had been fine, as had all her blood tests, for the functioning of various organs. The scan and the in-house blood tests came to £370.

So they then sent some bloods away to test for other things (not infections). The next lot of blood tests came back clear too. The vet prescribed a hypoallergenic food which really has absolutely every possible allergen cleaned out of it. The cost of the external blood tests and the first bag of hypoallergenic food was another £130.

The food looks and feels rather like rice krispies. We introduced it gradually, combined with her Lily’s Kitchen salmon. Now she has to stay on the hypoallergenic food completely for 12 weeks.

Hopefully, we will be able to add other stuff into her diet after the 12 weeks. If we can’t, I fear that at some point she will get bored of it and refuse to eat it.

Hetty doesn’t understand why she’s not allowed her favourite treats or toast or cheese any more (we only gave her tiny bits occasionally, but she loved them). We have to use the same hypoallergenic food as her treats as well as her meals.

But the early indications look good – no more diaorrhea, no more sick, no more being woken in the night. We’ll see how she is when the 12 weeks comes to an end, around Christmas.

(And we’re waiting to see if we claim back everything on insurance from her initial vet visit in July.)