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What causes constant diarrhea in my 8-month-old Lab on sensitive food?

Updated On September 23rd, 2025

Pet's info: Dog | Labrador Retriever | Female | spayed | 8 months and 23 days old | 75 lbs

8 month old lab, seems to have constant diahrea, on a lamb/rice for sensitive skin & stomach, it's been so hard to find a food and stick with it

2 Answers

Most Helpful Answer

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Answered By Amber Da Silva, DVM

Veterinarian

Published on August 21st, 2017

I'm sorry to hear that Hatty is having so much diarrhea. I would first make sure that she's had a fecal exam to look for parasites and that she is being dewormed regularly. You may also consider a blood panel to look for any underlying medical reasons that may be causing diarrhea, such as pancreatic disease. If the pancreas is not producing digestive enzymes like it should, then the food can't be properly broken down and nutrients can't be absorbed and this often results in diarrhea. Once medical causes are ruled out, then you can address the diet. Any time there is a diet change, you have to make sure to feed only that food for 6 to 8 weeks to see if she improves. During this time, she cannot have anything else by mouth, including treats, people food and even oral medications like Heartgard since it has real beef in it. Ideally, you would start with a prescription diet that it hydrolyzed or limited ingredient since there is no cross-contamination in these foods. Over the counter limited ingredient diets may still have trace amounts of other ingredients if they are processing other foods in the same facility. If it's a true food allergy, even trace amounts can cause problems. If you see improvement on a certain diet, then I recommend continuing with that diet and not changing anything as long as she's doing well.

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    Answered By Kevin Sanada, DVM

    Veterinarian

    Published on

    That is rather young for a dog to have an adversity to so much food. I wander if there is a disease process that has gone undiagnosed. If I were your veterinarian, I would want to be sure that the feces has been tested for parasites and bacteria that could lead to long-standing diarrhea like this. Some bugs like giardia could keep your dog continually having loose stool. I would also want to make sure that he does not have any other problems with his pancreas or liver, since these can also lead to diarrhea. Food intolerance is generally considered a rule-out diagnosis - meaning that we've ruled out all other causes of diarrhea. The only other way to definitively diagnose the problem is to have an intestinal biopsy done, but we usually test for other things first. A good way to test if it's a diet issue, is to just feed her chicken and rice for a week. If that helps, then you can do a diet elimination trial with your veterinarian to try and identify the exact ingredient that is causing the diarrhea. Sometimes, the diarrhea (or loose stool rather) is due to overfeeding. Make sure that Hatty is only getting the recommended amount on the bag. If he's getting more, getting treats, or getting table scraps, then those should be accounted for. You can also try to add in some probiotics to the food. There are products for dogs at the pet store and can help in some cases to form-up the stool. Here is a link to a short article that has a bit more info: https://www.petcoach.co/article/most-common-causes-of-diarrhea-in-dogs/ I hope that helps and you get this under control soon.

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