Advice on dog with white things in stool

Our question this week was:

I have a pit bull dog and he isn’t gaining weight. He is almost 3-years-old and he has little white things in his stools. Would this keep him from gaining weight? He also continuously eats down at his bottom and this drives me crazy. Please help thanks

Danna Allen

Answer

Hi – thanks for your email. Your email suggested that you have two concerns. First, that your 3-year-old pitbull has white “things” in his stool. The white things are probably worms. There are two main types of worms that owners commonly see in their dogs stool – if I had to guess, they are probably tapeworms. Sometimes you see the tapeworm segments that look like grains of rice or they can be flat and sometimes you can see them moving. The other type of worm it could be is a roundworm. Generally, unless the infestation is really severe, they don’t cause dogs not to gain weight. It could be a contributing factor but main not the only reason.

I’d recommend that you take your dog to your veterinarian with a fecal sample and let him evaluate to determine which type of worm that it is. The differnet deworming medications treat specific types of worms. The dewormers that may be used to treat treats tapeworms do not work to treat roundworms. I’d recommend finding out what type of worms he has and treat that specific worm.

The second problem you mentioned is that he continuously licks his bottom. I’m not sure where you are referring to but if it is by his rectum, that would make sense since he has worms. It could also be fleas. Dogs can get tapeworms from eating fleas so that could be understandable.

An couple articles that might be helpful to you on our Petplace.com website are Flea infestation in dogs and Internal parasites in dog.

I hope this helps.

Best regards,

Dr. Debra