the result of a dog eating grass

Grossness alert! This post is very disgusting...

Penny was eating heaps of grass on Sunday (and she had been grazing since Friday) so we discontinued her pain medication - Previcox - having read that it can cause nausea. Interesting discussion on this  drug here. I generally would trust a specialist vet over unmoderated discussion on the internet, but I'm glad we stopped this pain relief and I won't allow her to have it again, if possible.

And this morning - Tuesday - when we first got up from bed, we were greeted with this in the house!

We don't know which end it came out of, but tend to think it was the rear end, because we weren't woken by the retching and other horrible noises that usually accompany a vomit. On the other hand, she has in the past produced things like this from either end.

At all events, she is lively and happy today, though she still has a bit of a cough when she plays energetically with her toys.

the value of keeping a doggy diary

Penny's been eating grass. She has always used grass to settle her stomach, or to settle her gut, and it usually comes out the other end, all neatly folded and looking like it has passed through her digestive system untouched.

I've posted about it previously.

But this time she's had us worried, so much so that we went to the vet. She's been rushing outside not long after her meals, tearing at the grass like a sheep, and it's been coming through inside her faeces, so that at first we didn't realise it was there. (Now you know that we truly love her - who else would be pulling poo to pieces to see what's in it?) And then she vomited up a heap of grass.

So, to the vet...

He checked her thoroughly, asked if she's been well otherwise. Yes, she has. He listened to her gut for long enough that I started to get worried, and said it was noisier than usual. And I learned a new word when I read his notes - ascultation.

I mentioned to the vet that the first time we saw her rush outside, she had just been out in the garden chewing a three-day-old lamb shank she'd previously buried, and he said some dogs react badly to lamb. He then made sure her worming is up to date and suggested we monitor her for another couple of weeks, at the same time increasing the amount of roughage she gets.

I didn't think much of it until I came home and looked at the diary we keep:
Tuesday 24th January: breakfast - lamb, dinner - lamb, snacked on dug-up lamb shank;
Wednesday 25th January: breakfast - lamb and tripe canned food, dinner - not recorded;
Thursday 26th January: breakfast - lamb,dinner - Royal Canin Hypoallergenic dry food (rarely fed but we had some left over);
Friday 27th January: breakfast - beef, dinner - lamb;
Saturday 28th January: breakfast - lamb, dinner - lamb;
Sunday 29th January: breakfast - lamb, dinner - lamb kidneys;
Monday 30th January: breakfast - lamb, dinner - canned lamb and tripe;
Tuesday 1st February: breakfast - lamb kidneys, dinner beef and canned lamb and tripe.

I said to a friend that we might not have twigged about how much lamb we were feeding if we didn't keep a diary, and she said, "What about plain old memory?"

Well, I must admit we feed such a variety usually that I wouldn't be able to recall exactly what Penny's had over the last week. By the way, there have been other ingredients to her meals, such as raw or cooked vegetables, Vets All Natural Complete Mix, Glyde, Melrose Omega-3 oil and healthy treats.

But lamb has accidentally dominated. And why?
Because it was on special in the supermarket and I love a bargain.
Because I happened to buy lamb as the canned food we sometimes feed (high quality ZiwiPeak, by the way).
Because I thought it would be good to mix in some organ meat and didn't stop to think that it was also lamb.

Once we became aware of this, we stopped the lamb, and she has only chewed on a little bit of grass once, that we know of. She's having more roughage than usual, as per the vet's suggestion (cold cooked potato and pumpkin, which she loves), and some rice and cooked chicken for the next couple of days.

Now the question is, should we let her have lamb in future?

My thought is that we overfed one food type, not that lamb per se is the problem. But we'll wait for a few weeks before reintroducing it.

However, I did come across this interesting snippet at K9Web in looking for information for this post:

Dogs are not allergic to a dog food per se, rather they react to one or more of the ingredients in the food. Some of the most common culprits are beef, pork, chicken, milk, whey, eggs, fish, corn, soy, wheat and preservatives. Many animals are now developing allergies to lamb as well. This was once thought to be very hypo-allergenic, but the more it is used, the more sensitivities are springing up.

It's been a lesson for us.

And I'm glad we keep a diary, even though our friends think we're weirdly obsessive.

dogs and grass eating

Many's the time Penny takes herself outside to eat grass. Sometimes it's plain that she isn't feeling well, and is using the grass to clear her bowels (the folded leaves come out the other end looking just the same as they went in!). Other times she eats grass and vomits it up, presumably for a similar reason.

But sometimes she just eats it for no apparent reason. I've posted about this once or twice. Or three times, to be exact.

So it's interesting to read a post at Green Kingdom - at last, a blog by an Australian vet, and a holistic one at that! - about the value of greens in a dog's diet. In part she says:

That proves how great grass is at cleansing and detoxifying!! Sprouts, leafy greens, herbs like parsley or dandelion leaf, grasses like wheatgrass or the easily accessible couch grass (also known as 'dog grass'!), and seaweeds like chlorella, spirulina and kelp are all very beneficial in the diet of your pet.

Wow! Couch grass! We have that. We have it all over the place - growing through the raspberry bushes, twining through the nasturtiums, weaving its way underground to emerge between the chives...

We have it everywhere! Lucky Penny.

dogs eating duck poo

When I heard the doggy door click-clacking yesterday, I rolled over in bed and blearily ascertained that it was indeed the middle of the night - well, 5:30 am is the middle of the night to me. So what was Penny doing going out at that hour, given that she is 'off-duty' at night and doesn't stir?

I threw on a layer of clothing and staggered out with a torch, to find her eating grass. And eating grass. And eating grass. Uh, oh! I remembered the ducks on the banks of the Yarra.



And I recalled how Penny had grazed that area, refusing to come when called - which is unusual. At the time it took me ages to realise she was eating the ducks' poo.

I met a local walking with his dog and he warned me not to let Penny eat duck poo, because it can spread botulism, and he said at all costs to avoid wombat poo because the wombats have a type of blood-borne mange that is incurable. Apart from comcern about Penny getting this mange, I feel sad if he's correct that most of the wombats around the Yarra Ranges have this mange.

I had a look on the net and came across an article that says even in wombats mange can be dealt with. Interestingly, it said that humans too are afflicted by one of the mange mites - but in humans we call it 'scabies'. It's not the same mite that affects dogs.

At any rate, Penny's night-time grass grazing worked its magic, and out came a nice greenish poo. There's no definite information around about why dogs eat grass, but this is one time when I feel sure the grass eating was because of an uncomfortable bowel.

Thank goodness she seemed fine in the morning!

more grass eating by Penny

Yesterday Penny ate grass again, and this time it was a different species.





In this photo you can see where she has torn off leaves.



Today I thought I could see some grass in her bowel motion, so I assume she eats it for a problem in her bowels. Or is it in her stomach?

I think I'll cook up some rice and chicken and put her on a gentle diet for a couple of days. And we'll visit the vet if she's not looking perfectly fine in a couple of days.