I ask because I switch from Eukanuba Lamb & Rice to Nutro Ultra, because it contains no corn or wheat.
Now we have less poo, which I guess is good because it probably means more is being digested, but it has been over two weeks of only Ultra and the stool is still soft.
I thought maybe it was some sort of transitional thing, but it looks like this is how it’s going to stay. Internet conventional wisdom seems to think you want a combination of low volume and hard poo.
Yup. Soft stool indicates there is trouble with digesting the food (barring a medical reason, such as worms or an infection). Chronically soft stool can lead to anal gland problems, and of course it’s harder to pick up on walks.
If your dog was doing well on the previous food, there’s really no reason to switch. Too many people try to fix things that ain’t broke when it comes to what they feed their dogs. Dogs are individuals, and what works great for one dog may not work at all for another.
I think this goes for all pets. A couple years ago I had to make the sad choice to put my beloved ferret down, because she was in a lot of pain. The vet was facinated to learn her age, since he’d never seen a ferret that old before, and we were surprised since my brother’s ferret lived two years longer. He wanted to know what our “secret” was. The only thing we did differently was not to continue to offer them ferret food when it was clear that they’d rather starve themselves for a couple of days rather than eat it. Studies have shown that many ferrets fare just as well on kitten food as ferret food (but not cat! there’s not enough protein in cat food) which is what we fed them instead. Ours were obviously ones of that nature and had long happy lives once we stopped trying to get them to eat the specially formulated food that they hated.
I would switch to another food.
If the dog seems to have no other symptoms, it could be an allergy to an ingredient, but if you switch and there’s no improvement in the dog’s stool, I would take the dog to the vet.
My dog had this problem when we first adopted her. Her stool was like soft-serve ice cream for about a week and a half. I thought it was stress and her new food, but when I took her in to the vet’s office, they said she had a bacterial infection in her stomach. She had to take an antibiotic for a few days and that cleared it up.
You’re correct that the dog’s poo will be smaller with a quality food. There’s loads of info on the 'net about what additives to avoid, so you may want to factor this in when deciding which foods are best.
We switched to Wellness because it was supposed to be such a good food, but the stools never firmed up. We did the BARF diet for a while and enjoyed the beautiful stools and glossy coats, but then we started having seventy pound foster dogs in the house and it got a little expensive to feed them all the BARF diet, and I was starting to lose my commitment to it, so we transitioned them to Natural Balance: okay stools, but expensive. We’ve since switched to Flint River Ranch and the stools are great. Firm, small & from 5’ 4" above the ground, nearly always scentless.
Yeah, maye TMI but firmness is important. Anal glands are not something you want to be messing with and as previously noted, firm stools are a part of not having to deal with manual expression or abcesses.
Their energy levels and muscle tone seem fine and their coats feel great. We have a really picky eater in the house who like it, so that counts for a fair bit with us too.