Table of contents
Like us, our dogs have gut biomes that can be negatively impacted by food sensitivities and inflammatory bowel disorders, or simply by that box of half-eaten chicken and chips they found discarded in the local park. The results can be messy with soft, smelly poos and some dubious gas emissions! But although that may sound light-hearted, it can be distressing for dogs and dog-parents alike, particularly if it’s an ongoing issue. Our dog Coco has always had a sensitive tummy and despite elimination diets and various tests, we have never got to the bottom – if you’ll excuse the pun – of what the problem is. Consequently, we have always done what we can to boost her natural gut flora with a healthy diet, and now more recently with the addition of this supplement. This Omni Stool Firming Supplement Review looks at the pros and cons of this dietary aid, and we look in some detail too at the benefits Coco has experienced as a result of taking it.
Editor’s rating: 4.8 / 5
Pros
- Contain pre & probiotics
- Vet formulated
- Tasty 1-a-day chews
Cons
- Cost
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This post has been sponsored by Omni, but reflects Vegan Mum’s genuine opinion of the product.
The positives
This easy-to-use Omni stool firming supplement – from vet-founded supplement brand Omni Rescue – contains evidence-based ingredients that are very tasty (to a dog). This section looks at those positive factors in more detail:
Contain pre & probiotics
Pre & probiotics have separate functions in the body:
- prebiotics – like inulin – essentially feed the good bacteria in the gut, and also help with the absorption of nutrients
- probiotics – like the Bacillus Velezensis – actually contain the good bacteria and organisms that support the gut
With 5 active ingredients, selected because of their known and scientifically-proven efficacy, this stool firming dog supplement supports and boosts your dog’s gut flora with things like Bacillus Velezensis, inulin, kaolin, root powders and those all important beta-glucans. These ingredients all serve a different purpose, so kaolin for example helps to absorb toxins in the gut as well as to firm up those runnier poos, whereas inulin (also used in human gut supplements) is a nutrient that feeds good bacteria, helping them to flourish. So lots of good things in there that can have a positive effect on those canine tummies.
As with many supplements – for humans or dogs – the efficacy of pre & probiotics has still not been overwhelmingly proven, although there is certainly much more evidence for prebiotics. Some think that the good bacteria contained in probiotics never actually survive the journey to the gut. I guess the only way to really know at the moment is to measure whether a supplement has any positive effect, and in our experience, this Omni stool firming supplement has definitely benefitted Coco. If you’d like to read some of the online research that I have found, see my Research References section below.
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Vet formulated
This is a vet-founded brand and so caring for the health and wellbeing of your pets seems to be at the heart of the business. This supplement, like Omni’s dog food range, has been formulated by vets and nutritionists using ingredients that have been peer-reviewed and this may be why their own survey of vets suggests that 9 out of 10 would recommend Omni Rescue dog supplements. In addition, this Omni stool firming supplement is classed as ‘vet-grade potency’ which I assume means that its ingredients are at an optimal level.
If you would like to find out more about their pet food range, you can read Vegan Mum’s Omni dog food review here.
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Tasty 1-a-day chews
Providing you buy the right size of this supplement relative to the size of your dog (they come in Small, Medium, and Large), it will contain the appropriate dosage and you can feed your dog just 1 thumbnail-sized chew per day. Pretty easy, right? And just to help the process along a little, these chews are very tasty too as you can see from Coco’s anticipation of eating hers! This is helpful because it means you are:
a) not trying to persuade your pooch to swallow a capsule you have carefully hidden inside a tasty morsel (which they invariably spit out) or
b) opening said capsule and scattering the contents over their food that they will subsequently refuse to eat, or eat round!
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The negatives
Price, and packaging, are a bit of a concern. Omni are keen to point out though that they have already made positive changes to the packaging of some of their other products, particularly their dry dog food, and continue to look for environmentally-friendly solutions for their remaining products. Consequently, I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt here and concentrating on price.
Cost
Dog supplements are not cheap, so you can expect to pay similar prices to the human equivalent products. So in comparison to Omni’s dog food, which I find very reasonably priced, their supplement range seems pricier. For example, a one-off purchase of this Omni stool firming supplement for a medium-sized dog will cost you £24.99 for 1 month’s supply (£19.99 if you subscribe). However, in fairness, their prices are on a par with similar quality products on the market, and subscribers also get unlimited online vet consultations for free which is quite a benefit. In addition to that, a subscription can make you ongoing significant savings, as does does buying a multi-pack.
You can make further significant savings too if you use Vegan Mum’s exclusive discount code: veganmum50
Vegan Mum’s Conclusion of this Omni Stool Firming Supplement Review
I’m starting my conclusion of this Omni stool firming supplement review with a challenge – can you find me a dog-parenting household where the subject of their pooch’s poos isn’t a regular topic of conversation? OK, so they might exist, but I bet they are few and far between. Many of us obsess over our dog’s faecal fruitfulness and when you think about it, there is probably good reason for that. We love them so much, and their health and wellbeing is very important to us, but if they’re not feeling so good for any reason they are completely unable to tell us. Consequently, we look for signs that they are OK – clear eyes, shiny coat, good appetite, and…healthy poos.
So what are healthy poos? Believe it or not, in my research online for this review, I found image tables…yes, images of dog poos of varying colours and consistencies that you can compare your dog’s ‘outputs’ to. Now tell me we’re not obsessed! Well, at the risk of sounding more interested than perhaps I should be, the volume, colour and consistency does to some extent depend on what you’re feeding them, and from what I understand, those dogs on a raw diet particularly can have frequent diarrhoea. Now this can’t be pleasant for them, or for the dog parent trying to scoop said poo up into a small bag and my first recommendation in this instance would be to stop feeding your dog a raw diet, but you’d expect nothing less from a committed vegan like myself!
Anyway, Coco eats Omni’s Senior dry dog food which is great because it’s vegan, high quality, and low in fat which suits her very well because of her history of pancreatitis. I also feed her a fresh vegetable most days – a broccoli stalk or a bit of carrot – because I believe that helps to keep her gut biome healthy. And her poos generally start out well-formed and a good colour (am I really writing this much about dog poo?) but as the day progresses they can become, well, more difficult to scoop. She also does a lot of ‘air-licking’ in the evenings which suggests nausea, and what I think of as bile sick in the mornings – eats grass, then throws up a yellowish-green liquid.
And this has been the case for years, with many vet consultations, elimination diets to see if she has food sensitivities, omeprazole prescriptions, home-cooking trials, and blood tests under her belt – but all to no avail. Whatever she eats as her main diet, these symptoms have remained a constant and I do occasionally resort to a well-known kaolin paste when it gets bad, although it’s not a vegan product and is quite ‘fat-heavy’, so I don’t like using it. But I’d never considered a gut biome supplement – and a plant-based one at that – until now.
So, 3 weeks ago I started giving her this Omni stool firming supplement every afternoon and within days, it seemed to resolve her runny evening poo issue. I’m guessing that the kaolin contained in this product starts to act fairly quickly. I am also seeing a reduction in the number of poos, and her grass-eating/vomiting cycle is less frequent too so it will be interesting to see if that improvement continues. She is still air-licking a lot, but it is possible that’s not related to her gut, or if it is, she may need to take this supplement for longer before it can have its full impact on her gut biome. They didn’t build Rome in a day as the saying goes.
So I know that boosting a gut biome can take time and patience, and I really hope that this supplement continues to bring an improvement to Coco’s health and wellbeing. It certainly contains all the right ingredients that research suggests could be helpful, and the early signs are hopeful, so we have all our fingers, toes and paws crossed that it does!
Research References
National Library of Medicine beta glucans and gut microbiota maintenance
Science Direct – dietary supplementation with Bacillus velezensis
FAQs
Does my dog need supplements?
If your dog is eating a balanced, nutritionally complete diet, then providing they are fit, healthy and absorbing the nutrients from their food as a result, they should not need a canine equivalent of a multivitamin (unless you are homecooking – see below). In fact, according to this WebMD article on dog vitamins, like humans, they could end up having too much of a particular nutrient. However, apart from a low dose of vitamin C, this Omni stool firming supplement doesn’t add extra vitamins, and concentrates instead on additives that support the gut flora, so not risking any excessive intake of vitamins. Therefore, if your dog’s stools are runny or too frequent, then this product could be a good bet.
If you cook at home for your dog, advice from qualified dog nutritionists is different – see Vegan Mum’s guide to cooking food for dogs for more information about supplementation in these circumstances.
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