A question I am frequently asked by dog owners is that they have seen blood in their dog’s faeces and they are very concerned and of course want to know what can be wrong. Part of this concern no doubt is because this is a symptom which middle aged and older humans should not take lightly because of bowel cancer. This type of bowel cancer is rare in the dog by the way.
First of all lets be very clear, with a number of serious diseases like parvo you can see blood in the faeces but these will be very sick dogs. What we are talking about here is dogs which are otherwise bright, alert and happy and eating, in this case you may well have little to worry about when there is bright red blood in the faeces, particularly when you have just seen it the once and it is in the last few drops of the dog’s motion. Small bleeds like that are usually the result of your dog straining and this might well happen if your dog has diarrhoea or constipation.
You see I always say to clients that if you blow your nose often enough you will get a nose bleed and this situation is much the same, it can be just a rupture of a tiny blood vessel close to the anus which will resolve without treatment. You have much more to worry about if you see dark blood in your dog’s faeces which can represent a bleed from further up the intestinal tract. With this type of minor short duration bleeding the chances are that if you control the diarrhoea or constipation then you will sort out the rectal bleeding.
Of course if the rectal bleeding continues for more than a day or so or your dog deteriorates or shows other symptoms then you should have your dog checked out by your vet without delay.
Here is a link to the treatment of simple uncomplicated diarrhoea in the dog : LINK
Not found what you were looking for? Search again using the search box below.
Or have a live consult with an online vet right now!
This article was brought to you by Scott Nimmo BVMS MRCVS. If you have found it to be interesting or of value please share it with your social media using the buttons below.
