1 year old shi-tzu diarrhea

Question
I hope you can help....I woke up this morning to find a HUGE mess in my daughter's room (my doggie sleeps there).  There was diarrhea all over her bed, on the floor etc.  My dog has a habit of waiting underneath my baby's high chair to eat anything that falls over, well last night my daughter was experimenting with pasta salad....the diarrhea that I found this morning had undigested pieces of pasta and broccoli.  She has since (6 a.m.) had a couple of more spells of diarrhea however on the second to the last, I noticed some streaks of blood.  The last one was just thick mucus.  She is up to date with all of her vaccines, any idea what could of happened? ***The pasta salad had Italian dressing on it.

Answer
Nanci,

You need to take your dog to her veterinarian today. Diarrhea can be a very serious thing for a dog, as it can cause dehydration quickly - and this is especially true of a very small dog like yours. It can also be symptomatic of something serious. Diarrhea with blood in it also always warrants a trip to the veterinarian.

As for the pasta salad and broccoli - was anything else in it? Those two things alone aren't known to cause huge problems, unless she was given too much. Just be sure to tell her doctor everything she ate when you take her in.

My final piece of advice to you is to stop giving your dog human food. Explain to your daughter that she might accidently make her dog not feel well. Some human food is safe for dogs, but if you don't know exactly what is safe and what is not, you take a big risk every time you feed them something. If she is on good dog food she should be receiving full, balanced nutrition from that and won't need supplementation. A lot of dogs do benefit greatly from adding human food like raw meat and vegetables to their diet to make it more natural, but you should only do this under the guidance and counsel of a veterinarian or canine nutritionist.

Here is a link on what to feed dogs:
http://cooking.cdkitchen.com/AHealthyBite/442.html

Good luck!

Ashley