Willow got spayed last Friday and on Saturday when I picked her up, her stool was pretty runny. I chalked it up to stress. By Monday, it was pure liquid and mucous. Her brother, Kai, also started down the diarrhea path on Sunday, so it seemed pretty clear that it was more than just an emotional thing.

I was figuring giardia, as was the vet. She started both on flagyl presumptively and sent the stool samples off yesterday. Today I took Willow for her recheck after the spay and it turns out they have coccidia.

Since I am an infectious disease epidemiologist, I kept turning this over and over in my mind. Then it struck me - a couple of weeks ago we were at my dad's house. He has an amazing 3.5-acre yard that is totally fenced in and we took the dogs to run their little curly tails off. The only drawback is that in his neighborhood, several years back, someone must have released a pair of peas, because now the place is infested with them. They particularly love dad's house. They are beautiful, but peas mean lots and lots of pea**** poop.

I had no idea pea**** poop was such a delicacy among our discriminating hounds. I couldn't keep them out of it, as it is all over the yard. Anyway, that is my guess as to the source of the coccidia. What do you guys think?

Does anyone have any advice for how to stop the poop eating? I have read about goose poop also being high on the list of culinary favorites. (BTW, has anyone's B gotten sick after eating goose poop?)

At home, they really do have "drop it" and "leave it" down, but there it was like it was a challenge to eat as much poop as possible and run away to find more, getting increasingly frantic as I tried to make them stop.

This will bum me out to lose such an amazing space for them to play, but I cannot imagine how to clean up pea**** poop on a huge lot like that. Any ideas are welcome.

Amelie