A bland diet for dogs with gastroenteritis needs to not only soothe their symptoms and pain but also improve their gastrointestinal health.
More often than not, a doctor recommended bland diet for dogs with gastroenteritis includes highly processed kibble (junk food) and is coupled with medications.
Are you looking for a better, all-natural, health-boosting alternative to junk food and medications for your dog with gastroenteritis?
Below I’ll share with you the best bland diet for dogs with gastroenteritis. Not only will the natural diet options listed below help heal your dog but they’ll also save you a lot of money in the long-run.
First, let’s take an in-depth look at gastroenteritis to best understand what your dog needs to support healing and for gastroenteritis prevention.
What is Gastroenteritis in Dogs?
Gastroenteritis, also called infectious diarrhea, is inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract. This includes the stomach and the small intestine.
Symptoms may include the following:
- diarrhea
- vomiting
- abdominal pain
- fever
- lack of energy
- dehydration
Most dogs with gastroenteritis will have intermittent episodes of vomiting and diarrhea. This means that the symptoms come and go (intermittent: occurring in irregular intervals, not continuous or steady). The vomit may contain foamy, yellowish bile, especially if your dog has an empty stomach or after the stomach has been emptied by a vet.
With gastroenteritis in dogs, there will be large amounts of diarrhea, several times a day. Most dogs will also be tender when picked up around the abdomen or when any pressure is applied to their abdomen. They may shy away from touch or resist handling of their stomach and hindquarters.
If your dog is affected with gastroenteritis they will be less active (lethargic). They will also have a decreased appetite or refuse food and water completely.
A low-grade fever is also common in dogs with gastroenteritis.
Be aware that dehydration can occur quickly if vomiting and diarrhea persist for more than 24 hours. Dehydration is a serious issue that needs to be monitored very closely. We’ll talk more about dehydration below and how you can avoid your dog becoming dehydrated through a bland diet for dogs with gastroenteritis.
Also, your dog may start dry heaving or gagging after they eat or drink.
Episodes of gastroenteritis in dogs can last two weeks or less. Some bacterial infections cause severe abdominal pain and may persist for several weeks.
Causes of Gastroenteritis in Dogs
Gastroenteritis in dogs is most commonly caused by viruses. However, there are other causes.
- bacteria
- parasites
- fungus
Eating poor quality food or food that is contaminated, or coming in contact with a dog that is infected can cause gastroenteritis.
Prevention of Gastroenteritis in Dogs
Prevention of gastroenteritis in dogs starts with a healthy, safe, species-appropriate diet. Not only does contaminated food cause gastroenteritis in dogs, food that is highly processed and that contains harmful ingredients such as species inappropriate foods, preservatives and food coloring also cause gastroenteritis.
We’ll talk more about diet below, in detail.
Additional Preventions of Gastroenteritis in Dogs:
- A clean environment
- Clean drinking water
- Proper disposal of waste
How Common is Gastroenteritis?
In humans, in 2015, there were two billion cases of gastroenteritis, resulting in 1.3 million deaths globally. In 1980, gastroenteritis caused 4.6 million deaths in children. Death rates were reduced significantly by the year 2000, largely thanks to the use of oral rehydration therapy.
These numbers show just how important hydration is for the survival of a gastroenteritis affected dog.
Is Gastroenteritis in Dogs Fatal?
Yes, gastroenteritis in dogs can be fatal (just like in humans) if not treated.
Remember that gastroenteritis in dogs is most commonly caused by viruses, but also caused by bacteria, parasites and fungus. If any of these are able to develop further, they can cause death. You must treat the cause of the problem as well as prevent life-threatening dehydration.
Signs of Mild to Moderate Dehydration:
- Decreased urine output
- Dizziness
- Dry mouth
- Dry skin
- Increased thirst
- Lethargy
- Urine is a darker yellow color than normal
The above symptoms can quickly worsen. Severe dehydration may include the following:
- Abnormal breathing
- Coma
- Confusion
- Dizziness
- Drop in blood pressure
- Fever
- Lethargy
- No urine output
- Poor skin elasticity*
- Rapid heart rate
- Seizure
- Severely decreased urine output
- Shock
- Sunken eyes
- Urine is a deep yellow or amber color
*When the skin slowly sinks back to its normal position when pinched. This is called “prolonged capillary refill” or “poor skin turgor”.
Don’t wait for any of these signs before you start a bland diet for dogs with gastroenteritis. Diet details to follow.
Reactive Arthritis
Reactive arthritis is a known consequence of bacterial gastroenteritis. It can develop within four weeks of an infection. This is due to inflammation within the body. It’s extremely important to feed a bland diet for dogs with gastroenteritis that also includes arthritis preventatives. The goal is to reduce inflammation throughout the entire body, not just the digestive tract.
Long-term Effects of Gastroenteritis in Dogs
Repeat infections typically occur in areas with poor sanitation and/or when a dog is fed a poor diet or is suffering from malnutrition. Stunted growth and long-term cognitive delays can result from gastroenteritis in dogs.
Reactive arthritis occurs in about 1% of cases.
Hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) may occur due to an infection of Escherichia coli (E. coli) or Shigella species that produce toxins. HUS causes low platelet counts, low red blood cell count due to red blood cell breakdown and poor kidney function.
Common Causes of Gastroenteritis in Dogs
Viruses and E. coli and Salmonella are the primary causes of gastroenteritis in dogs.
Risk of infection is higher in puppies and young adult dogs due to their lack of immunity. Feeding a diet that strengthens your dog’s immunity from the time they start eating solid foods is imperative to their overall health.
Parasitic Gastroenteritis in Dogs
There are a number of parasites can cause gastroenteritis in dogs. Intestinal parasites are parasites that live inside the gastrointestinal tract.
Intestinal Parasites:
- Coccidia
- Giardia
- Hookworms
- Roundworms
- Tapeworms
- Whipworms
Transmission
Transmission may occur from drinking contaminated water or when pets share toys or food. Water quality typically worsens during the rainy season and outbreaks are more common at this time. Avoid letting your dog drink standing water or water from a public place (dog park, for example).
It’s also best to avoid public areas with a lot of canine foot traffic. I personally don’t take my dogs to dog parks or kennel them when I’m away.
Non-infectious Gastroenteritis in Dogs
Non-infectious causes of inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract include:
- Medications
- Poor quality foods
- Infected foods
- Foods with chemical residues
Crohn’s disease is also a non-infectious source of gastroenteritis in dogs and is often causes severe cases.
Additional Causes of Gastroenteritis in Dogs
There are many causes of the symptoms of vomiting and diarrhea in dogs. Some of the more common conditions that your veterinarian will attempt to eliminate during the diagnostic workup include:
- cancer
- diabetes
- foreign bodies (eating/swallowing non-food items)
- hyperthyroidism
- intestinal blockage
- intussusception
- kidney disease
- liver disease
- pancreatic disease
- poisons
- toxins (from food or environment)
- tumors
Diagnosis
Gastroenteritis in dogs is typically diagnosed clinically based on a dog’s signs and symptoms. Vets essentially diagnose gastroenteritis by eliminating or ruling out all other serious possibilities.
Key information in your dog’s medical history includes:
- current diet (portions, frequency)
- a list of what your dog recently ate and drank (over 48-72 hours)
- any new foods (including treats)
- any recent medications
- any recent exposure to pesticides
- any recent exposure to cleaning products
- any other new materials in their environment
- any recent exposure to a new animal
- any recent exposure to a new person
- any new activities
- any new environments
- any history of vomiting and/or diarrhea
- any recent illness
- any chronic illnesses
- any new supplements
Once they have this information your veterinarian will perform a physical examination.
What they’ll check:
- abdominal pain
- bloating
- gas
- heart rate
- respiratory rate
- signs of dehydration
- swellings
- temperature
- tenderness
Next, your vet will recommend diagnostic testing. This will include the following.
Urinalysis: A urinalysis detects dehydration, urinary tract infections, kidney disease and urine glucose (for diabetes).
Complete Blood Cell Count (CBC): CBC testing reports the presence of dehydration and infection.
Serum Chemistries and Electrolytes: This testing detects organ system abnormalities and electrolyte imbalances caused by repeated vomiting and diarrhea.
Abdominal X-rays or Ultrasound: These are taken to show possible stomach or intestinal obstruction(s) or other abnormalities.
Stool Culture: A stool culture will show causes such as bacteria, parasites and fungus.
Once other causes of your dog’s clinical signs have been eliminated and the diagnosis is complete, your vet will prescribe treatment.
Antiemetics and Antibiotics
Antiemetic medications may be helpful for treating vomiting. However, it’s not a cure for the cause of the gastroenteritis.
Antibiotics are not usually used to treat gastroenteritis but they are sometimes recommended if symptoms are severe or if a bacterial cause is isolated or suspected.
Gastroenteritis usually does not require medication. Oral rehydration therapy is generally the recommended treatment.
Rehydration with Bone Broth
The primary treatment for gastroenteritis in dogs is rehydration.
This is done by giving your dog lots of fluids and the best way to do this is with bone broth. Bone broth is also one ingredient of a bland diet for dogs with gastroenteritis. We’ll talk more about that, below.
The gelatin in bone broth helps prevent intestinal damage and improves the lining of the digestive tract.
Your dog’s gut lining is their body’s most important line of defense against bacteria and yeast passing into the bloodstream, which triggers inflammation.
Glycine from gelatin is important for restoring a healthy mucosal lining in the stomach and facilitating the balance of digestive enzymes and stomach acid.
When a dog has an episode of gastroenteritis their stomach enzymes are damaged and stressed, and their bodies will inevitably lose a lot of good enzymes, especially if your veterinarian prescribes medication(s). Those enzymes will need to be restored and feeding bone broth is a great way to help your dog’s body do just that.
It’s also important to note that when dogs don’t make the proper amount of enzymes and/or have a poor amount of stomach acid, they can experience common digestive problems like nutrient deficiencies, bloating and anemia. Older dogs often experience more digestive problems because vital digestive juices decrease during the aging process.
Bone broth is also full of minerals that are vital for rehydrating your dog.
Bone Broth for Reactive Arthritis
Above we talked about how reactive arthritis can be a consequence of bacterial gastroenteritis. It’s important that you combat the onset of reactive arthritis in your dog by reducing the inflammation in their body.
Collagen and gelatin ease symptoms of arthritis. Research shows that people with joint pain, bone-related problems and exercise-related soreness or injuries can all benefit from gelatin.
Feeding Gelatin Helps with the Following:
- Reducing inflammation
- Reducing pain
- Aiding in recovery
- Improving athletic ability
When cooking bone broth at home, especially for a dog with gastroenteritis, it’s important that you use marrow bones and other bones that are from organically raised animals. It’s even better if you can find bones from animals raised on pasture. The only ingredients you need for good bone broth are marrow bones and a dash of apple cider vinegar to help break down the bones during the cooking process. If you can find chicken feet, duck feet or beef tendons, toss those in as well. They will add a significant boost of collagen to the bone broth.
The longer you cook a batch of bone broth the more nutrients are pulled from the bones and marrow. If you’re treating a dog with gastroenteritis then you want to be able to give them bone broth right away. I highly recommend a pressure cooker. When cooking bone broth on a stove it can take anywhere from 48 to 72 hours to cook the bones properly. With the pressure cooker, you can get exceptional bone broth in 3 to 4 hours.
Give bone broth to your dog slowly as too much can also cause diarrhea. You also want to make sure that they have access to water 24/7. To give your dog something to chew on you can either give them ice cubes (water) or you can freeze bone broth into ice cubes.
Best Bland Diet for Dogs with Gastroenteritis
Before talking about a bland diet for dogs with gastroenteritis I want to first mention something that I have already spoken about above, which is that it’s very important for your dog’s overall health to remove processed foods from their diet. Processed foods and the ingredients in processed foods can cause gastroenteritis. Additionally, if you’re feeding a diet of inappropriate foods to your carnivore those can also cause gastroenteritis. Eliminating these things from your dog’s diet is going to not only boost their overall health but protect their bodies from an episode or episodes of gastroenteritis in the future.
Now let’s talk about what’s included in a healthy bland diet for dogs with gastroenteritis.
I highly recommend that you start with homemade bone broth and from there I recommend that you add a mild meat or meats. Chicken, rabbit, quail and Cornish hen are all mild meats.
A bland diet for dogs with gastroenteritis should not include beef, pork, venison, buffalo or any other rich red meats. You also want to make sure that you don’t overfeed fat in the form of chicken skin (for example) or particularly fatty cuts of meat. Too much fat can cause digestive upset. It’s best in the case of treating gastroenteritis that you remove chicken skin and excessive fat.
While organs are a necessary component to a healthy raw diet, while healing your dog from a bout of gastroenteritis it’s best to not feed organs for a few days. This will give your dog’s digestive tract a chance to calm down, fight off the illness and repair itself.
Once your dog is back to normal you can add organs and rich meets back into their diet.
A bland diet for dogs with gastroenteritis can also include eggs. Eggs are a little bit on the rich side but they are packed with nutrients. A bite of eggs will go a long way toward helping your dog recover but make sure not to overfeed them. Introduce them into the bland diet for dogs with gastroenteritis, slowly.
If you already feed your dog a raw diet, while feeding a bland diet for dogs with gastroenteritis you can grind up eggshells to mix into your dog’s food in place of whole raw bones. This will make your dog’s meals all the more easily digestible which will give your dog’s body a break from having to focus heavily on digestion and allow it to focus on healing. Make sure you only feed eggshells that have not been washed and coated to look shiny. Buy eggs locally!
Preventing Gastroenteritis in Dogs
Preventative measures are essential for good health and diet is the single best way to prevent illness and disease.
Gastrointestinal issues most commonly occur when dogs are fed a poor diet. In fact, poor, processed diets have led to skyrocketing numbers of gastrointestinal issues across the board in dogs. The only way to naturally correct these issues is to feed a quality, species-appropriate diet of raw meats, bones and organs.
Just like we humans need to eat a diet of whole, unprocessed foods, our dogs do too.
In feeding your dog a raw diet of whole meats, bones and organs you can dramatically impact their health for the better and increase their longevity.
Unlike kibble which is highly processed and denatured, a raw diet offers your dog nutrients in their most natural forms. When your dog’s body is made to digest unnatural forms of food it sees them as foreign and has an inflammatory response. As we discussed above, inflammation is a big part of gastroenteritis in dogs. A body that is already inflamed is that much more susceptible to gastroenteritis.
While processed food causes an inflammatory response, raw healthy foods in their natural form are anti-inflammatory. Just like in humans, the health of the digestive tract of a dog fed a processed diet versus the health of a digestive tract of a dog fed a raw diet are on opposite ends of the spectrum.
A balanced raw diet of healthy, species-appropriate foods provides essential vitamins in their healthiest forms. A raw diet also provides essential minerals and fatty acids that are far less damaged than those that are highly processed.
A healthy raw diet of whole foods also helps your dog engage with their food. They’re able to exercise their jaws teeth and minds just like their wild ancestors. All of this is incredibly edifying for domesticated carnivores.
In addition to feeding your dog a healthy raw diet, in order to prevent gastroenteritis in dogs, it’s also important to take a look at their environment. We talked above about the risks of visiting public spaces like dog parks with your dog but it’s also important to think about their home environment.
To help your dog avoid gastroenteritis you can make the following changes in your home.
- trade chemical cleaners for organic cleaners
- use an organic laundry detergent
- use safe organic pest control on your yard
- eliminate rodents and other pests that can carry diseases (trap, don’t use dangerous poisons)
- disinfect your home with natural disinfectants
- clean or replace your dog’s bedding
- naturally disinfect food and water bowls on a regular basis
- improve the health of the other animals in your household
- remove your shoes before walking into your house
These are just a few simple things you can do to help prevent gastroenteritis. While there are plenty of additional changes you can make to help ensure your dog’s health, diet and environment should come first. Help your dog develop an ironclad immune system with a healthy raw diet and improve their environment with the tips above.