My dog keeps trying to poop but only liquid comes out: Does your dog have loose, smelly stools and you need to know what to do when your dog has diarrhea? If that’s the reason you typed your concern you’ve come to the right place!
Whether your dog has acute diarrhea or suffers from long-term chronic diarrhea, we have a precise guide for you on how to stop diarrhea in a dog and also how to prevent diarrheal diseases in the future.
When dogs eat something wrong, the intestines can react to it. This often results in acute injection diarrhea and usually, the dog will recover from this fairly quickly. As a result, a visit to the vet is not necessary for the first instance.
If there is acute diarrhea lasting longer than 48 hours or if acute diarrhea in combination with other symptoms such as fever starts to present then it’s time to get him to the vet.
Digestive System of Dogs: A Simplified Review
The dog as a carnivore does not chew or grind its food like we humans do with our teeth, but bites it roughly and swallows it. This is where the actual digestion process begins. Food enters the stomach through the esophagus.
You can think of the dog’s esophagus as an elastic tube that connects the throat to the stomach.
The esophagus transports food toward the stomach with the help of peristaltic movements of the longitudinal and circular muscles that run along the esophagus.
The movement pushes the food pulp further and further down and at the same time, the movement prevents liquids or leftover food from getting back into the mouth.
The Stomach Function and Structure
A dog’s stomach is surprisingly large in relation to its body size and can even expand during feeding. This wonderful quality comes from the ancestors of our dog, the wolf. If the hunt was successful, the wolf could feed on it if no animal could be caught for a few days.
Nevertheless, it is advisable to feed our dogs 1 to 3 times a day in appropriate portions.
You can imagine the stomach as a curved U.
The stomach sits in the area of ​​the back 4 ribs and is held in place by very flexible ligaments. Unfortunately, the flexibility of the ligaments is responsible for the frequently occurring and dreaded twisted stomach.
The task of the stomach is to further break down the incoming food and mix it with gastric juice.
The hydrochloric acid contained in the stomach helps to form the enzyme pepsin, which allows proteins to be broken down.
The PH value of the stomach is about 0.5 to 2 on an empty stomach. When the stomach is full, the PH value changes to 2 to 3, so there is a so-called: acidic environment.
On the one hand, the acidic environment allows the enzymes to work effectively and optimally, on the other hand, any germs that may have been absorbed, e.g. largely killed off via the feed or the environment.
The food pulp is pre-digested in the stomach and passed on to the small intestine, where other components of the food are broken down.
Intestinal System of the Dog
The dog’s intestinal system fills up a very large part of the posterior abdominal cavity. Food containing meat and protein can be digested very quickly, which is why the intestines of carnivores are only half as long as those of animals that only eat purely plant-based food.
Small Intestine: Function and Structure
The small intestine begins at the exit from the stomach and can be up to 7 m long, depending on the size and breed of the dog.
The small intestine consists of three sections:
– the duodenum
– the jejunum
– and the ileum.
The small intestine breaks down food into its individual components and passes the collected nutrients into the blood.
In the small intestine, the chyme is neutralized by bile, because we remember that the chyme comes from the stomach and this has an acidic environment.
Nutrients that cannot be completely broken down in the small intestine migrate further into the large intestine.
Large Intestine: Function and Structure
The task of the large intestine is to process the remaining mass into feces.
The mucous membrane of the large intestine with its mucous glands ensures that the mass becomes slippery and is thus transported further to the excretion in portions without any problems.
For this purpose, the entire contents of the large intestine are transported to the rectum.
