Your dog's poo is data. Here's how to read it
by Ben, co-founder
Twice a day, your dog hands you a status report on their digestion, and most of us scoop it straight into the bin without reading it. Vets read it. Here's the translation.
What good looks like
Formed but not rock-hard - it should hold shape and pick up cleanly, leaving little behind. Chocolate brown. Consistent day to day. Once or twice a day for most adult dogs. If that's your baseline, most of the job is just noticing when it drifts.
The readings that mean something
| What you're seeing | What it usually means |
|---|---|
| Soft-serve texture for a day or two | Minor upset - new food, scavenged snack, stress. Usually self-resolves |
| Chronic softness, mucus, or 3+ a day | The gut is unhappy with something ongoing - diet is suspect number one |
| Hard pellets, straining | Too little fibre or water - or too little exercise |
| Grass-eating urgency at dawn | Classic acid-tummy sign, worth mentioning to your vet if regular |
| Very dark and tarry, or red streaks | Blood. Vet, today |
| White rice grains in it | Worms. Vet, this week |
The microbiome, in one paragraph
Your dog's gut houses trillions of bacteria that digest what the stomach can't, train the immune system and manufacture nutrients. They eat what your dog eats - mostly the fibre. Feed the same short, fibre-sensible recipe daily and they settle into a stable workforce; chop and change and they riot, which is what a food-switch wobble actually is. It's also why prebiotic fibres like chicory inulin appear in gut-focused recipes, ours included: they're bacteria food.
Poo as trial data
In any food change, the gut reports first. Food-responsive tummy trouble typically improves within about two weeks - weeks before the skin moves. Firmer, smaller, less frequent poos in week two are real evidence the new food agrees with your dog, and worth filming for the record, unglamorous as that sounds.
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