It happens to all of us, one of our animals whether it’s our dog or our cat gets a nasty bought of diarrhea. It’s no fun for either party involved. But we have solutions to help! Natural/safe solutions!
Saccharomyces Boulardii to the rescue!
First and foremost it’s always prudent to get a fecal test done to rule out any major issues if this is an ongoing problem. Feeding a high quality fresh/raw food diet is paramount for our animals health. A highly processed diet will never be helping our animals thrive and many GI/stomach issues can be attributed to low quality highly processed diets. But even our raw fed animals will encounter the dreaded diarrhea once in a while so read on.
Hydration!
The risk of dehydration becomes a very serious concern if the diarrhea is a chronic issue. Make sure your dog or cat is staying properly hydrated, drinking water, check their hydration by checking that their gums are wet/moist, pinch and pull up on their scruff of their neck and the skin should “snap” back down quickly. If the skin is slow to return back down this can be a sign that your animal is dehydrated! You may need supplemental forms of hydration such as subcutaneous (SubQ) fluids that your vet can administer and that you can also do at home if this is required. I personally found myself battling a nasty case of diarrhea in my cat and we had to do subcutaneous fluids at home 3x a week while we nursed him through this until we were finally able to get his diarrhea until control.
Saccharomyces boulardii has been well researched in its safe and effective use in animals “Supplementation with S. boulardii significantly improved the intestinal status” source pubmed
What you’ll need:
Boulardii probiotics :
Jarrow brand Amazon link
combined with
Dr Tobias preForPro prebiotic : Amazon link
What’s in PreForPro?
It is both a prebiotic and a probiotic, meaning it provides both important bacteria and fuel that good bacteria needs to work efficiently. And the supplement consists of
LH01 – Myoviridae, LL5 – Siphoviridae, T4D – Myoviridae, LL12 – Myoviridae
Depending on your dog or cat and the severity of diarrhea, each situation can require drastically different amounts of s. Boularadi and if the animal has a diarrhea bowel movement within 1 hour of you dosing s. Boularadi. It must be redosed because it gets expelled with that bowel movement.
You start with 1 full capsule and pull open and sprinkle contents in food combined with 1/4 capsule of the Tobias preForPro. If your dog or cat won’t eat because they’re not feeling well or won’t eat the food with the boulardii in it, then you must syringe the boulardii into their mouth. Using a syringe with just a little bit of water, approximately 5-6 ml, empty contents of s. Boulardii capsule and 1/4 capsule of preForPro, shake to mix well and slowly syringe into the back corner cheek pocket of your dog or cat. It’s important to point out that we’re not squirting this diet their throat, rather we’re slowly administering the liquid into the back corner of their mouth so they can then swallow it on their own. We’re not just forcing this down their throat.
Go slow and give breaks while gently dosing just a little bit at a time until finished. Have some reserved water handy, draw a little water back into syringe just to get any remaining bits of supplement and give the rest to your dog or cat
Pro tip: for cat owners
Cats generally aren’t the most willing participants to cooperate syringing stuff in their mouths, one of the easiest ways I’ve found personally with my own cat is to wrap him up with a big bath towel, like a burrito, I sit on the floor with him between my legs and I use a spring clamp to hold the towel pinched together up around his neck (the clamp is only holding the towel together DO NOT PINCH YOUR CATS SKIN DOING THIS)
Monitor bowel movements for improvement and increase dose of boulardii as necessary. You may only need 1 capsule. In severe chronic watery diarrhea such as I had in my cat. It took 7 capsules in one day to finally clear the diarrhea. This was mostly due to 5 trips to the litter box that particular day with diarrhea, so each time this happened I had to redose the boulardii
Each dog or cat will be different and you give as many pills as it takes to stop the diarrhea
Note: you do not have to give more preForPro each time. 1/4 capsule is sufficient
Once the diarrhea subsides you can then work On figuring out a daily maintenance dose by tapering down, monitoring stool, adjust daily dose as necessary
Why s. Boularadi is better and safer than traditional forms of treatment such as the very commonly prescribed metronidazole/aka flagyl ?
Many people are unaware that metronidazole is an antibiotic, and subsequently it wipes out ALL the gut bacteria. It doesn’t discern between good and bad and as you can imagine, we do NOT want to lose the beneficial Good healthy gut bacteria our cats need for proper digestion!. And many animals prescribed metronidazole may have the diarrhea come right back the second the drug is stopped. More info on metronidazole can be found here:
“Our results point toward a long-lasting effect of metronidazole administration, and should be considered as further evidence to support a more cautious approach to prescribing this antimicrobial to dogs.” –Effects of metronidazole on the fecal microbiome and metabolome in healthy dogs – Pilla – 2020 – Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine – Wiley Online Library
Metronidazole is a drug and with drugs come potential side effects. Sometimes severe. Metronidazole Has been linked to neurological issues pubmed article here
Also, Consider getting a microbiome test done for your animals gut health. This can help immensely in correcting imbalances in you animals gut microbiome. If the gut isn’t working right it will create a cascade of issues in our animals health. “the gut microbiota are essential for maintaining the homeostasis of the host by affecting the functions of the brain, liver, heart, kidney, immune system, and the metabolism of adipose tissue Dysbiosis is sued by microbes’ unbalance in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, inducing a negative impact on health” -source pubmed PMCID: PMC9414249
Personally, I’ve used animal biome and their staff is outstanding with phone support answering questions.
Interested in learning how to get your dog or cat on a properly balanced home prepared raw diet? head on over to learn more HERE
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