The “Hurry Diarrhea” Puppy

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The “Hurry Diarrhea” Puppy

Every puppy must, eventually, be taught to depend upon something besides milk for his food. This process is called weaning and constitutes the changing of a pup's diet from liquid to solid. Most dog owners consider weaning to be that instant in time when one takes a pup from his mother. But the fact is that weaning actually takes place both before and after a pup is separated from his mother. During that time his digestive system is learning to digest the foods he will be eating for the rest of his life. Just like all learning experiences, the steps of weaning must be taken slowly or the pup's digestive system will rebel, and "hurry diarrhea" or dysentery will be the result.

An improperly weaned puppy often finds himself with nothing but strange food to eat, strange people pawing over it, and a strange environment surrounding it. As a result of this physical and psychological trauma, he will likely develop anorexia. As the puppy adjusts emotionally to his new environment, anorexia is followed by an enormous hunger. The hunger becomes so great that he will even eat the strange food that he has not learned to digest yet. If he is allowed to eat such a diet, the pup begins to suffer from alternating bouts of diarrhea and constipation.
These constant bouts with diarrhea and constipation lead to poor food absorption and injury to the lining of the intestines. Finally, the degenerative changes progress through the entire wall of the intestines. The intestines become sluggish and may stop their movement altogether. Ultimately, there is a disappearance of the intestinal lining. The intestinal wall may become as thin as tissue paper. The pup then rapidly becomes emaciated and dehydrated. He will eventually die unless proper remedial actions are taken immediately.

The secret to preventing hurry diarrhea is a full understanding of what it is. The "hurry" is used because the dog owner tried to push the puppy too fast with a food his intestinal tract was not yet ready for. Food which might be perfectly suitable for an adult dog was fed too soon to a puppy that has just been weaned.

When you have gotten in too big a hurry and hurry diarrhea occurs, you need to back up and start all over again. Return to the bland, simply digested foods that should be fed to a pup just learning to eat solid food, and then train his intestine to handle each new food in succession. At the same time, you must contend with an irritated, perhaps diseased intestine, which complicates your efforts considerably. There is no fast cure for hurry diarrhea. What your puppy needs is a little slow and easy treatment as well as a patient owner.

The Growing Puppy

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The Growing Puppy

After the puppy has been weaned, he can begin to learn how to handle and digest different types of new foods. During the next 12 to 18 months of his life, he will continue to learn how to cope with the variety of new foods he eats. For the first six to eight months of that period the puppy will be both growing and using nutrients and energy at an incredible rate. If a food is fed containing ingredients to which a puppy is not used to or nutrients that are difficult to digest, he may be unable to obtain sufficient nutrients and energy to sustain his rapid growth. In such cases the puppies are usually stunted.

In addition, foods containing too many ingredients which the puppy has not yet learned to digest can cause another problem called "hurry diarrhea". When a dog owner gets in too big a hurry to feed adult dog food to a puppy, excessive amounts of indigestible materials are usually introduced into the puppy's digestive tract. These materials irritate the sensitive intestine of the inexperienced puppy and produce a diarrhea.

Formulating a suitable diet for a puppy is one of the most important steps in starting a dog's life. The only source of nourishment a rapidly growing puppy receives comes exclusively from what his owner provides him. His health and growth will be a reflection of how well the owner is doing his job. If you provide your pet with poor materials during this building period your puppy will be destined to carry inferior parts for the rest of its life.

A growing puppy needs twice as much energy and nutrients as an adult dog. Simply feeding him twice as much as an adult dog's food is not enough, however. The energy and nutrients must be in a form that is digestible by the puppy's inexperienced and sensitive digestive tract. However, as the puppy grows older, the diet can include foods that are more and more difficult for a dog to digest. Continue to feed your growing puppy the same food that was used to wean him, but gradually add additional foods to train the puppy's inexperienced digestive system. Just as the food fed to an adult is not suitable for a puppy, the food fed to a puppy is not suitable for an adult dog.

By the time the puppy has reached maturity, his digestive system should be thoroughly trained to handle all of the foods it will be fed during his adult life. Generally, canned and soft-moist foods contain ingredients of higher digestibility than dry foods. Canned foods are usually more suitable to feed to growing puppies than soft-moist foods. There are exceptions, however, and a few dry foods containing easily digestible nutrients are much better for feeding fast growing puppies than numerous canned foods containing poorly digestible nutrients.

Weaning Your Puppy

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Weaning Your Puppy

Whether a newborn puppy is fed by his own mother or by his owner, he must eventually be taught to depend on something besides milk for his food. This learning process is called "weaning", and represents the changing of a puppy's diet from liquid to solid. At about three to four weeks of age, as soon as their eyes open and they are able to move about with some ease, most puppies will begin to experiment with the solid foods being fed to their mother. When this happens it is time to begin to teach the puppies to eat from the pan.

Instituting such an early feeding procedure accomplishes four important things. First, it allows you to feed the puppies a food that is more satisfactory for them than the food you are feeding their mother. Second, it speeds up the weaning process because the puppies will learn to eat solid food at an earlier age. Third, it begins the social interaction between the puppy and his owners. And finally, it allows you to reduce the mother's intake of food at the same rate you increase that of her puppies. The latter prevents the mother from overeating as the early feeding of her pups promotes reduced lactation.

Weaning is a learning process in which the pups' digestive system is trained to eat solid foods. Before the puppy is born, he is fed by his mother with pre-digested nutrients. When he is whelped the puppy drinks the mother's milk. The mother's milk contains some of the most digestible nutrients that a puppy can eat. At weaning the puppy's digestive system must learn to handle each new food in turn, as it comes to him. Similar to all learning processes, the weaning process cannot be taught faster than the puppy's ability to learn.

In formulating the diet, the ingredients that make up the food fed to a puppy that is starting to wean must be highly digestible and non-irritating. An excellent weaning diet can be made easily by preparing slurry using a specialized dietary animal foods designed to be fed to patients with gastro-intestinal disorders, mixed into equal parts of the mother's milk substitutes. "Half and half" coffee cream can also be used. High-quality ration-type commercial foods also make adequate solid foods to mix with the liquid part of the diet. In all cases, ผ to ฝ tablespoonful of grated, raw liver should be added to each can of food just before it is mixed. The slurry can be either beaten with a fork or mixed in a blender.

For larger breeds, it may be more practical to use the higher quality, expanded dry foods in combination with the canned foods to blend with the liquids. Addition of dry foods may also help these larger, faster-growing puppies to get sufficient nutrients in the quantity of food they are able to consume in. Whatever the mixture used, the quantity of milk substitute in it is gradually reduced, so that when the puppy is about six or seven weeks old, he is only eating pure, solid food.