I had a similar problem three years ago with my dog. I changed her diet and she has been symptom free since then.

My experience is that most vets do not know much about nutrition so they are ill placed to advise on this.

I would try one of the diets suggested if I were you.

Have you tried a holistic vet like Nick Thompson, or Christopher Day who are very knowledgeable about feeding?

'mucous,blood and straining'...... sounds like colitis,its a matter of managing not curing i lived with a dog with this for 17 years.

These were my thoughts too, hence holistic vet idea.

i use the james well beloved turkey and veg its cereal free. has some potatoes but only a very small amount has sorted my dog out brilliantly. sell it in pets at home and will be a lot cheeper than hills prescription. i pay £30 for a 10kg bag but thats special offer at the moment normally £38 but can get online for £35

Never was a truer word spoken! My vet told us that she only ever attended one or two lectures on nutrition, and neither were mandatory, she just chose to attend! Extraordinary when you consider that diet is probably the most important aspect of animal husbandry.

But colitis is not one specific disease or disorder - in the case of humans, it could manifest itself as Crohns, Ulcerative Colitis, IBS - all of which we know can be managed with diet as well as drugs - my daughter has Crohns, and takes Azathioprine for it and has done for 10 years now. She has never had a flare since the initial one when she was 14, which is miraculous - very few people with Crohns are that lucky.

With dogs, colitis is almost always down to bad diet and/or the wrong diet. With my type of dogs, it is extremely common for them to be intolerant of kibble and other commercial dog foods. I am not saying that the dog here falls into this category - the symptoms could also be that of giardia or cryptosporidium or even stapphylococcus aureus (the latter 2 in particular can cause bloody stools, which is why I asked the OP if the blood was bright red, or dark, because that is very symptomatic of whether the blood has come from the anus, or from the colon).

It never ceases to amaze me how diverse our dogs are - they all come from the same wild genetic source, and yet through tens and tens of thousands of years domestication, manipulation and breeding, man has been able to turn the wolf into a domesticated dog that can tolerate foods that are totally alien to the original wild animal. When we gave Hal James Wellbeloved, on the advice of the vet, he literally exploded for days and was so ill that the vet had to treat him with special antibiotics that killed all the flora and fauna in his gut to make him better. I know many dog owners who swear by James Wellbeloved, but it nigh on killed my old boy.

Totally agree with you, when you have a dog with colitis you dont forget and yes they can have a very peculair not very pleasant wind aroma when it flares up. We have had more than one Boxer with it over the years.

I always think the blood and mucous is a telltale sign

Our boy is stabilised on Wafcol Potato and Salmon. Wainwrights do one as do other food companies. A lot of people swear by Chappie although none of ours could tolerate it. Each affected dog will have different tolerance levels

If you do change your dogs diet do it slowly over 3-5 days

What else do you feed in the treat line? Something remotely innocent like dog biscuits could be setting it off, chews. pig ears etc

Does he get table scraps? Red meat is very hard to digest and can set a dog with colitis off

The general rule is once you get a food that suits, stick with it. For "treats" take some of his daily diet to one side and use it as treats

As Tupacs says, it is something that is managed, not cured. Once you get on top of it however, it is manageable

The blood when its there is bright red . The vet seems to think its because he strains. blood is not always present but he can get a bout of the runs at any time. I do think he has a very sensitive digestion , if someone gives him a treat he has not had before that can start it off.I have been monitoring as best i can everything he eats in effort to isolate his allergies, but as i mentioned before he will eat anything. The vet put him on a diet of chicken and rice but that made him worse, so i do think you might be onto something with the no carb diet. You have experience of this kind of feeding, I have been looking for a dry food as im not sure about feeding raw food or ho to prepare it can i cook the meat before i give it to him ?Do you think i should ask the Vet to test him again before i change his diet, he has been tested for parasitic worms 3 times now all his results have so far been clear. Once again many many thanks for your response.