Seizures, Stubborness, Eating Feces

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jeefgeorge
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Seizures, Stubborness, Eating Feces

Post by jeefgeorge »

Our 6yr old basset hound has had seizures since she was 2; she is currently on phenobarbital (which is an appetite stimulant) and KBr. Since starting medication, she has been fond of eating her own feces (tried adding pineapple to her diet with no success) ... we had this problem under control with supervised trips outside and routine yard clean-up. After her last dosage increase (about 3 months ago), she has been more stubborn (and being a basset, she was already very stubborn). Recently (within the last few days), she had started defecating in the house and immediately turning around and eating it. She does this when we are home, when we are not (in her kennel ... we can tell by new stains where the poo had been sitting), in the middle of the night ... we are getting so frustrated. She's gotten to the point she doesn't tell us when she needs to go out anymore (she get's let outside when our other dog - 14yr old chow mix - asks to go, but she will only urinate), she just goes into an unoccupied room does her business eats it and comes back to the room she was in (we have also tried using baby gates to keep her in a more confined area in the house). When we go on our usual walk, she only urinates - when in the past she would poop a couple times during the trip. The only part of her schedule that has been changed is we have a house guest (who has been staying with us for about a month) and she doesn't spend the day in her kennel, she is left in the house with him while we are away at work.

Can anyone help us figure out why this has escalated or how we can stop it?

Thanks
T&J W
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Mattie
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Re: Seizures, Stubborness, Eating Feces

Post by Mattie »

What tests were done to try and find the reason for the seizures? I have had 2 dogs that had seizures, it is important to find the reason if you can, often you can't. One of my dogs had food allergies which caused seizures, also if his blood sugar got low and after panic attacks.

What do you feed him? Can you put up the list of ingrients?

What is his daily routine?

What exercise does he get?

What training does he get?

You can often see a seizure building up so can take action, I could with Tommy, do you see any changes in him before a seizure?

Please give as much information as you can so we can try and help you.
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jeefgeorge
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Re: Seizures, Stubborness, Eating Feces

Post by jeefgeorge »

Diet
She is on Royal Canin C/D dog food, fed 1c every 12hrs (she also recieves medication at these times).
Treats (on occasion): Iams medium dog biscuits and plain rawhides

Seizures:
She has had all kinds of tests done for her seizures and they never found a reason for them (she still has routine testing about every 6mo to do blood work, check her brain activity, check the functionality of her organs - her first seizure was how we figured our her liver had failed) ... But the seizures are not a problem she has a cluster a couple times a year (they are usually mild 3-4 petite mal seizures in a cluster) ... I also know a lot about seizures, since I have been having them my entire life.

routine:
She get's woken up at 5am and let outside (we usually wander the yard for 10min or so until both dogs have gone potty)
fed at 7am
put in her kennel around 7:30am
let out of the kennel around 5pm and taken for a ~20min walk ... some days we go to the dog park for an hour or so (our dog park is a open field along the side of a creek with clusters of trees throughout)
at 7pm she is fed again
between 7:30 and 8pm their water is picked up (it's put back out in the morning)
we go to bed around 10pm

between 5pm and 10pm both dogs are taken outside every time one of them asks (whines while walking between a person and the door) to be let out

Training:
She has basic obedience training
We took professional agility training classes for two years
She also "finds it" (we hide biscuits from her, let her smell one and tell her to find them)
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Mattie
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Re: Seizures, Stubborness, Eating Feces

Post by Mattie »

Why are you picking her water up?

I have been trying to find the ingredients of the food you feed and can't, does it have maize, wheat or alfalfa in? Dogs sensitive to these can have seizures. Also thyroid problems can cause them, has she had a full thyroid test?

I have never known pineapple to work with eating their feces, in fact nothing worked for my Greyhound. By picking up immediately he learnt to turn round when he was doing it to eat it coming out.

Bassetts are hunting dogs, bred to go all day when hunting, she needs more than 20 minutes exercise a day. Dogs don't exercise themselves when left in a yard, they need to be taken to get enough exercise.
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Sarah83
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Re: Seizures, Stubborness, Eating Feces

Post by Sarah83 »

Royal Canin either has wheat or maize in it because I remember arguing with a vet who wanted me to switch Rupert to it despite him having problems with those ingredients.
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Nettle
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Re: Seizures, Stubborness, Eating Feces

Post by Nettle »

Woo-Hoo what an opportunity you have here to really fulfil that dog! :) She is a scent-hound, so work that sniffer - lay some trails in the yard for her to follow with something smelly at the end of it, like a small piece of cheese or frankfurter, scatter some kibble for her to find, give her a stuffed Kong to investigate. The more she exercises outside, the more she will stimulate her bowels. Faeces eating is a symptom of many things, and your dog is a hound, stubborn as you say, and by the sound of it very bored, so give her lots of good things to do and keep her company while she is doing them.
A dog is never bad or naughty - it is simply being a dog

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emmabeth
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Re: Seizures, Stubborness, Eating Feces

Post by emmabeth »

I cant find that food either... and Royal Canin dont seem to want to admit to what the ingredients are on their website....

Regardless, I suspect the fairly obvious answer is that shes hungry... and bored.

12 hours between meals is a pretty long time for a hound.. I would suspect on medication that stimulates appetite its a lifetime!

Is this diet/feeding regime something your vet has prescribed or is it just your normal routine with your dogs?

I also do not like withholding water except under veterinary advice.. and withholding water from a dog on a dry diet and on medications seems very wrong to me..so unless this is something your vet has recommended you do, I would suggest you start allowing 24 hour access to water.

As Nettle says... theres a lot of scope to add in more interesting stuff to her day and this could well reduce her desire to eat her own faeces. Hounds ARE stubborn... you need to work with them not against them... they do things when they see a good reason to do them, and laugh in the face of 'because I said so'!
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Sarah83
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Re: Seizures, Stubborness, Eating Feces

Post by Sarah83 »

I cant find that food either... and Royal Canin dont seem to want to admit to what the ingredients are on their website....
Can't find Royal Canin C/D, it's not listed on their site but the Royal Canin website does list the ingredients, you just have to choose the specific food, it pops up in a new window and the ingredients are down at the bottom along with the feeding guide. Ingredients for the Maxi Adult are
Maize, dehydrated poultry meat, maize flour, animal fats, dehydrated pork protein, maize gluten, hydrolysed animal proteins, beet pulp, minerals, fish oil, soya oil, yeast, egg powder, hydrolysed crustaceans (rich in glucosamine), taurine, hydrolysed cartilage (source of chondroitin).
Checked several of the foods and all had similar ingredients.
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Mattie
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Re: Seizures, Stubborness, Eating Feces

Post by Mattie »

Maize, dehydrated poultry meat, maize flour, animal fats, dehydrated pork protein, maize gluten, hydrolysed animal proteins, beet pulp, minerals, fish oil, soya oil, yeast, egg powder, hydrolysed crustaceans (rich in glucosamine), taurine, hydrolysed cartilage (source of chondroitin).
I would not feed that food to any of my dogs, it has Maize as the first ingredient which means that it is the main ingredient, it also has maize flour and maize gluten, they have split the maize up so it wouldn't look as much. Many dogs are allergic to maize, it would cause one of my dogs Joe to have siezures, he was allergic to it. Crustaceans and hydrolysed cartilage can be anything, again they are being very crafty in how they are wording the ingredients. Then there is poultry meat, animal fats, animal proteins, all give very little information and can be anything.

Why is he on this food?
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