by Kimberly from Keep the Tail Wagging Blog and Diane Weinmann

Background info—  Keep the Tail Wagging blog is about feeding your dog raw food.  This is their experience but we can all learn from the information that they have brought forward.

For the most part, our dogs’ poop changes given what you are feeding them–and you may find this to be true also – poultry yields lighter poop, red meat yields darker poop.  But that’s not all.

What Does Grey Dog Poop Mean?

Let’s start with grey poop, since that’s what inspired this post.  When I Googled “grey poop” I found that Rodrigo could be experiencing a blockage of the bile duct.  It turns out that the reason dog poop is brown is because of bile and if our dogs’ poop is grey or light in color…

• the right amount of bile isn’t being produced,
• gallstones are developing,
• or there is a blockage of the bile ducks

Source: WayCoolDogs.com

What Does White Dog Poop Mean?

When their dog’s poop is white (or a super pale color), then he has too much bone in his diet. He will have white poop after a few meals of turkey or duck necks. The bone content in turkey and duck necks is pretty high, so I’ve started mixing in ground duck hearts when I mix up our dogs’ weekly meals.

Hearts are classified as meat, not organ meat, and helps to bring the meat to bone ratio into a better balance for our dogs.  Take care in how much heart you add to a dog’s meal, because they are rich and can lead to diarrhea.  When I mix up a 20 pounds of dog food, the hearts make up 5 pounds.

I mix the meat with The Honest Kitchen to finish off their balanced raw meals.

Dog Poop that Starts Out as Brown, but Turns White

Sometimes their dog’s poop will start out as brown, then slowly turns white over a day or two.  They’ve noticed that this happens if  they feed him raw ground turkey from the grocery store.  The bacteria in meat that we buy at the grocery store is higher than the meat they buy through our co-op, because…

• the meat arrives at our grocery store thawed out (the co-op meat is always frozen),
• it’s immediately set out for sale under temperatures that don’t kill or slow the growth of bacteria,
• and the meat isn’t intended to be fed as raw dog food; it’s intended to be cooked.

They no longer feed our dogs meat from the grocery store unless they cook it first.  When they notice their dog’s’s poop changing color, they add a little more FullBucket or In Clover OptaGest to his meals or give him raw goats milk for a few days.  They either add it to a meal or  give it to him separately as a yummy, cool treat.

Mucus on Dog Poop

They actually rarely see mucus on their dog’s poop; it’s mainly on Scout’s poop and kind of looks like a slug danced all around his turd.  They’ve read that this is perfectly normal.  The mucus is the stuff that lines the intestines to keep them lubricated and keep everything flowing nicely.  If his poop was completely covered with a thick layer of mucus, they will give the vet a call to see what he’d recommend.

Dog Poop Varies in Color with Proteins

Another thing they’ve noticed is that their dogs have darker poop when they eat elk, venison or emu.  Brown poop with rabbit and pork.  Lighter poop with duck and turkey.

When the poop is very dark, it could be due to blood higher up in the digestive tract or due to the protein a dog is eating.  And red blood on the poop is due to something closer to exit.  Either way, it’s worth a call to the veterinarian, because it’s better to be safe than sorry, and blood in the stool can be serious.

When in doubt- call your vet!  It is better to bother your vet now than to regret something later on that was easy to spot and may mean the difference in your time with your pet!