Observing our dog's feces is possibly one of the simplest and cheapest ways to monitor its he alth status and anticipate any possible alteration. When we go to the vet, the first question in a check-up is probably "what are your stools like?", and the variation in color from the usual pattern of our dog usually causes us quite apprehension.
This article on our site about the most common causes of white feces in dogs aims to shed some light on this more common coloration. or less atypical in the stool, and encourage you to check the consistency and appearance of your dog's stool on a daily basis.
White feces in dogs due to dietetic causes
change to a raw meat and bone diet may result in hard, white stools that break up like chalk in our hands when we try to pick it up. The reason for this color and hardness is the presence of calcium found in the bones that our dog ingests. Sometimes, the amount of bones is excessive and we can find our dog with difficulties to defecate, although he tries repeatedly. This constant urge to defecate is called 'tenesmus', and if we have opted for this type of diet we should consult the specialist who has formulated it or who advises us on its follow-up to facilitate intestinal transit and not cause anal fissures or obstructions.
Does that mean I should stop giving him this diet?
In principle, if we have allowed ourselves to be guided by experts and the dog responds adequately to the new diet, it would only be necessary to deal with that occasional inconvenience. To avoid the worrying presence of those white and hard stools in the dog, we can choose:
- Include more fiber in the diet, with products such as pumpkin or using asparagus.
- Reduce the amount of bone, vary the type or choose to use them on certain days of the week.
- Test the use of pro/prebiotics to promote intestinal fermentation and adaptation to the new diet, based on live bacteria such as Enterococcum faecium, or Lactobacillus and other substrates for existing beneficial bacteria to thrive, like inulin, a disaccharide.
- Using during the first days until adaptation an intestinal lubricant similar to those that humans take in occasional situations of constipation can help, such as liquid paraffin (with a somewhat unpleasant taste), or even supply a couple of tablespoons of olive oil every 12 hours until everything normalizes, correcting the dose according to results. In this sense, we recommend you consult our article on the benefits of olive oil for dogs in order to expand your information and discover all its uses.
Using other drugs that we usually have on hand for these situations is not appropriate, although it may seem that it will do our dog good, because before stimulating intestinal motility, we must make sure that those stools that are too hard have not compacted into a cecolith (literally, stone-like stool), and have given rise to an intestinal obstruction.
The color of the feces is still a reflection of what the dog ingests, and it is not always due to the owner's decision. Thus, in country dogs, with free access to farms and other territories, we can find these white and hard stools without expecting it. Although we feed it regularly with dry food, many dogs with free time and enough territory are dedicated to stealing eggs or eating carrion, including bones and feathers, with what the feces, sometimes, indicate to our displeasure their customs while we do not watch them. This extra calcium, coming from the shell of the egg and the skeletons of its prey, can lead to white and hard stools in the dog.
In these dogs that usually defecate in places that we cannot see, or that we are never sure of what they are doing or eating, it is vitally important to check the appearance of their feces as soon as we notice any abnormality. If you have to spend three days in your shed or garage for testing, this information can prevent intestinal blockages before it's too late, for example.
And will they stop being white and hard over time?
The color of feces in dogs on homemade diets will depend on the proportion of food they eat, and on what day they eat it, so we can notice small variations in color and consistency during the week. In general, the white color will remain, with variations, and the hardness will be corrected depending on what is most suitable for the dog with all the advice that the experts will give us, but less quantity of feces is almost always to be expected, more compact, and with a lighter color than in animals fed with feed.
Acholic stool
Ethercobilin is the brown pigment that forms from bilirubin and gives stool its color. If for any reason bilirubin formation or transport is impaired, it is inevitable that the stools appear whitish-grayish in color, and are then called acholic stools.
And what can cause a lack of stercobilin?
There may be a liver disorder, in which case the liver is unable to carry out its functions. Among them, is to form bilirubin from the degradation products of erythrocytes. As a consequence, this pigment will not accumulate in the gallbladder and it will not be evacuated to the duodenum with the rest of the bile substances after each meal, so stercobilin cannot be formed from it, and the stool will not be stained of its usual color. Some causes of liver failure that we can find in dogs are:
- Hepatic neoplasm: Primary or secondary tumors (eg, a breast or bone tumor metastasis).
- Congenital alteration (at birth) at the level of hepatic vascularization.
- Acute hepatitis: liver inflammation, for example, due to the ingestion of toxic substances, or of viral origin (virus of canine hepatitis), or of bacterial origin (leptospirosis).
- Cirrhosis: Liver degeneration as a result of a long-term disease, for example, sustained subacute hepatitis. It is the end result of many liver diseases that may have gone unnoticed by the owner and the veterinarian due to the great compensatory capacity of this organ.
- Pancreatitis: inflammations of the pancreas.
Likewise, any alteration in the transport of bilirubin can cause this bilirubin deficit: stones in the gallbladder (rare in dogs), obstruction of the bile duct by an abdominal mass that compresses it and prevents you from evacuating bile… In these cases of lack or absence of bile evacuation towards the duodenum, the stool usually presents steatorrhea (they appear pasty), since bile acids are necessary to absorb fats, and since there are no acids, these are eliminated entirely in feces. The white and soft stools in dogs, like fat, are usually an indication of quite common liver or pancreatic disease.
And how to detect these problems?
The liver usually takes time to signal its condition, unless it is a peracute disease. Due to its already mentioned reserve capacity, it can guarantee the functions even when a large percentage of its extension is affected. But if our dog presents some or all of the following symptoms, it may be time to go to the consultation:
- Makes frequent bowel movements, with acholic and/or pasty stools.
- You have bilious vomiting.
- Itching of unknown origin.
- Jaundice.
- Anorexia or hyporexia (he eats, but much less).
- Increased water intake.
- Abdomen distention (ascites) or tenderness, exercise intolerance…
A series of laboratory tests, such as a blood count, biochemistry and total protein in principle, and, possibly, a coagulation panel, as well as a detailed clinical history that the specialist will carry out with our help, will be the key to detect the exact origin of white stools in our dog. However, and since the liver enzymes are not always as altered as might be expected judging by the symptoms, diagnostic imaging tests (plates, ultrasound…) are almost always necessary.
White feces in dog due to mucus
Sometimes the stools have a normal color but appear wrapped in a gelatinous cloth and white, which leads us to think that this it's your colour. But if we try to undo them, we can see that it is actually a kind of bag that completely covers them, or only in one area.
This mucus usually appears in the event of irritation of the intestinal mucosa as a defense against aggression, and it is common to find it in diet changes abrupt or when the dog suffers from a parasitic disease, such as giardiasis or some macroscopic parasite. It may be seen in isolation, or it may be interspersed with stool that is completely normal in appearance and color.
To avoid this punctual irritation of the intestine, we must make changes to the diet gradually, help it with probiotics if necessary and deworm it regularly or with the appropriate products, according to the advice of our veterinarian.
White feces in dogs due to parasites
Sometimes, dogs are so parasitized at the intestinal level, that when starting their deworming plan marked by our veterinarian we are alarmed to see that their stools are practically white. It is usually due to the appearance of numerous nematodes (worms) already dead and sometimes fragmented, adhered to the fecal surface, and we can almost always find some alive and mobile, it all depends on how the product that we have used for deworming works, since some they force the parasite to detach itself from the intestinal wall, others kill it directly when it is absorbed into the blood or through its integument, etc.
If our dog has several tapeworms, generally of the Dipylidium caninum type, the massive elimination of gravid proglottids to the outside can make us observe faeces full of a kind of white rice grains They can become so numerous in a relatively small faeces that we confuse this presence with really white faeces if we do not get close enough and pick them up to see what is causing this coloration. For more information on this type of parasite, don't miss our article "Symptoms and treatment for tapeworms in dogs".
Didn't you think it was important to pay attention to the appearance of the stool and you picked it up almost without looking at it? The saying that "we are what we eat" has a lot of truth, and feces can tell us about our dog's he alth. In addition, appearances can sometimes be deceiving, all the more reason to check that everything is in order when they relieve themselves on their daily walks.
