Some advice I received:-

Whilst increasing the fibre bulks out the stools and keeps the food in the large bowel for longer and improves the efficiency of absorption, it does tend to mask the symptoms rather than actually address what is causing the loose stools in the first place.

I would hazard a guess that loose stools means the dog's particular diet does not suit

From Poppys point of view, loose stools wasn't the problem...she's fine in that regard.

Thats funny nor was Angel's - what freaky little dogs we must have

Sam

I dunno, so many springers seem to have anal gland issues, maybe it's a problem with the breed- perhaps the positioning of the glands isn't quite right ? I know that my cockers used to have anal gland probs until I started feeding raw - and firm stools fixed the problem for them and they never had to have them emptied again.

Murphy also doesn't have a problem with lose stools, but really suffers with his anal glands.

It's very odd. Firm stools should empty anal glands - that's how it works.......firm stool pushes on anal glands, which then release their contents.... so if firm stools aren't doing the trick I don't know that adding bran would make any difference

Yes, it is very strange. I don't know if his glands are not quite positioned right. Our vet doesn't really seem very on the ball with ways of dealing with it. I've seen him a couple of times and his solution was to try the bran, and if that didn't work try a specialist diet. Pound signs and alarm bells started ringing in my head at that point!

I would really love to switch Murphy onto a raw diet, but there are a couple of reasons why we can't at this stage.
1 - practicallity. We don't have enough freezer space, or space to put a second one - I'm working on that one!

2 - Murphy has problems with resource guarding raw food. It's something we are working on, but it is very slow work. For example, the other day I gave him a little bit of bacon. He doesn't seem to know what to do with it, and plays with it for ages, but then guards it if you try to go to help him. Again, we are working on this. Ideally I would like to give him his food outside and just leave him to get on with it, but unfortunately we have a right of way through our back yard, so we can't take the risk of leaving him out there with food.

Sooooooooo, (I'll get to the point eventually!) our only option for the time being is good quality kibble, with added bran. It seems to manage it sufficiently that he needs them emptying about every other month, which is vastly better than before, and it doesn't seem to distress him when it comes round to emptying time. Hopefully in the long term though we'll be able to move to a raw diet and see if that helps.

I think there are springers on here, fed a raw diet, that still have anal gland trouble though which leads me to think springers must have "different" anal gland positioning or something ...

There do seem to be an awful lot of them who suffer. I know with my old dog (a mutt) he was fed on a reasonably poor quality food (didn't know any better then) and only ever had to have them emptied occasionally. Before that we had an Irish Setter, and she never suffered either.

I honestly think part of Daisy's problem is her inability to concentrate!! When she's stopped for a movement, as it were, she's so quick to be moving on to the next thing, she's often walking off down the path or field or wherever before she's even finished what she started so I think she doesn't have time to let things take thier natural course.

The bran has helped in some ways but she does still have some unexpected leaks

Sam is also like this If he's doing the toilet and something gets his attention he's off before finishing