Dog Poop Color Meaning and Health Problem Signs

Watching out for the poop of your dog is a good way to gauge the health and wellness of your pet. The poop of a dog is an indicator of what is going on within their bodies and also as a result of what is given to them as diet.

Indeed, the dog’s stool should maintain the same color, size and consistency in order to prove that the dog is maintaining a healthy disposition. Some of the things that may cause a change in the color and consistency of a dog’s stool include a change in diet, stress, infectious diseases, parasites or obstructive process among other reasons.

While consistency is a major implication of the health of a dog, the color also speaks volumes as to the wellness of the pet.

Dog’s poop color determines whether the dog is maintaining good health, a consistent diet or if it is engaging in dietary malpractices. Your vet may ask you to bring the stool in the laboratory for analysis and the first and obvious thing that he is going to look out for is the color of the poop.

While color is one of the things that will be looked out for, screening is also done for giardia which looks for the giardia protozoa as well as the eggs of parasites.

Additionally, during screening the technicians will check for overgrowth of normal bacteria that indicates a problem within the pet. While common color of poop should be a chocolate brown, some variations of colors that one would need to look out for in their dog’s poop color include:

Streaks of Bright red and Mucus on Surface of Stool

Sometimes, dog owners may notice their dog’s poop color to contain streaks of red substances or sticky red mucus fluids covering the poop. This is indicative of inflammation within the pets’ large intestines and the mucus is secreted as a natural process of the body protecting the intestinal lining.

While this may not be a cause for the owner to sound the alarm bells, it is recommended to seek out the advice of a vet once the stool doesn’t change color after several instances.

Soft liquid-brown diarrhea with or without streaks of blood

This is a soft squishy poop with the dog’s poop color being brown and seems to be brown or a close variant.

While this is generally not a cause for concern as it may be indicative of a change of diet, it is still advisable to seek out help if the situation does not improve after 24 to 48 hours.

Voluminous bloody diarrhea

When the dogs poop color is bloody and the consistency is watery, this is a serious cause of concern and the owner should immediately seek out the advice of a vet.

This may be as a result of a rather common dog condition known as hemorrhagic gastroenteritis. This bloody watery mass may be as a result of tissue sloughing off of the intestines and it does not augur well for your pet.

Yellow-orange light stool

When your pet shoots out yellow-orange and light stool, this may be as a result of the development of biliary or liver disease or it may also be as a result of the rapid movement of food through the digestive tract.

When food moves quickly through the digestive tract, it may not have time to be mixed with bile that gives it the distinctive brown color. Nevertheless, a more thorough examination may be necessary to put your mind at ease and also ensure that everything is alright.

Black stools

When your dog poop color comes out as a black and tarry stool, it may be indicative of a problem further up the digestive tract where there is a bleeding that is causing the blood to become digested thereby giving the stool the distinctive black color.

Often times, the problem may be traced back to a bleeding ulcer, a result of rat poisoning, heat stroke or a condition brought about by an immune related disease. The black stool indicates the loss of a large amount of blood in the digestive tract and thereby this necessitates a visit to the vet quite quickly before the situation gets worse.

The vet will perform some ultrasound to assess the lining of the intestinal tract as well as some blood work in order to get to the root of the problem.

Grey stool

When the dog poop color is grey, it may be an indicator that the food is not fully digestion and that some of the nutrients are not absorbed as they should in the small intestines. The grey stool is more commonly associated with the exocrine pancreatic insufficiency (EPE) that is also called maldigestion in common terms.

This is a condition where the pancreas does not function as normally as it should and being the organ responsible for producing digestive enzymes, nutrients are no longer properly absorbed within the pets body.

Image Credit goes to www.akc.org