I took Tilly to the vets this morning as she has been unwell since Saturday. She has had severe diarrohea which has become more and more bloodied as time has passed.
The vet checked her over and took her temperature, which was normal. The vet concluded that Tilly has colitis and prescribed antibiotics and a kaolin paste.
Would you expect a dog to have colitis if their temperature was normal? It seems a bit odd to me.
Depends....uif it was bacterial in origin, then yes, I would expect the temperature to be raised, but if fungal , stress related or IBS then no, I would not expect it to be raised.
So with normal temperature why was your dog given antibiotics? No idea!
when my dogs were younger, they had a few bouts of a thing called haemorrhagic diahorroea and yes both those words are probably spelt wrong. Apparently it isn't always accompanied with a rise in temp. Its either of bacterial origin or its an ibs type thing but the ibs type thing carries a risk of the ulcers in the gut picking up an infection because of the gut contents. Standard treatment was an anti inflammatory injection, a short course of antibiotics and a kaolin prep. Touching wood they haven't had it for years
Thank you all for your answers and good wishes. I just hope she's been given the correct medication as she is a very sorry looking thing, at the moment. I hope she's a bit brighter in the morning.
Tilly I think its one of those "common things happen the most and are cured by common cures" situations. With the symptoms the vet sees, they won't immediately want to leap to invasive tests or complex and possibly unpleasant treatments. Whenever it happened to mine the vet used to say "if x y or z happens then come back immediately, if he isn't brighter in x hours then come back." the other thing the vet may have asked about is worming as sometimes a heavy worm burden can cause the same symptoms but its probably not a good idea to worm on spec if the poor girl has got an upset stomach.
Well I am not a vet but it was explained to me as a prophylaxis as the condition can quickly get worse if the bowel ulceration becomes infected. The intention is to guard against infection while the bowel is healing. So as I understand it, yes reasonable along with treatments to reduce inflammation and control the diahoroea (I will spell it correctly one day)