Dog poop colour guide: what’s normal, and when to call the vet

Twice a day, every day, your dog files a health report and you throw it in a bin. Fair enough. But knowing how to skim that report is genuinely one of the highest-value habits in dog ownership: gut trouble, parasites and even internal bleeding all show up in the poop days before they show up in the dog.

Normal is chocolate brown, shaped like a log, firm enough to pick up cleanly, and boring. Vets score consistency 1 to 7, where 1 is pebbles and 7 is puddle; you want a 2 or 3. The other thing normal is: consistent. Most dogs run one to three a day on a rhythm you could set a watch by, and a change in that rhythm means as much as a change in the product.

The colour chart

Colour	Usually means	Do this
Chocolate brown	All is well	Nothing. Enjoy the win
Green	Grass eating; bile trouble if it persists	Watch a day or two
Yellow or orange	Recent food change; liver or bile if it lingers	Vet if past 2 days
Black, tarry, sticky	Possibly digested blood from the stomach end	Vet promptly. Same day if the dog is also flat
Red streaks	Fresh blood from the lower end: colitis, straining, anal glands	Once, in a happy dog: watch. Repeated, or with diarrhoea: vet
White or chalky	Too much bone in a raw diet	Fix the diet; vet if it persists
Grey, greasy, foul	Fat isn't being digested: pancreas territory	Book a vet
White rice grains	Tapeworm segments	Vet for a dewormer. A photo helps

One rule outranks the whole chart: colour plus a sick dog equals vet today. Any odd colour is a different conversation the moment it arrives with vomiting, refused food, low energy or a tender belly.

The two waiting rules

Plain diarrhoea in an adult dog who is otherwise bouncy gets 24 to 48 hours of grace: no treats, small bland meals, and most cases fix themselves. Blood, a puppy, a senior, or a dog who seems unwell cancels the grace period, and puppies specifically dehydrate fast enough that waiting is its own risk.

Constipation is usually water and diet, but a male dog straining repeatedly with nothing to show for it has earned an exam; that pattern has a couple of nastier explanations.

Photograph first, bag second

Memory is a terrible witness. "It was kind of dark, maybe?" helps nobody, but a photo is exact, timestamped, and mercifully shareable without a bag. When something looks off, shoot it before you scoop it. If you use Petus, send the photo there: it scores the stool on the same 7-point scale the clinics use, checks the colour against the same warning signs as this chart, and keeps the dated log, so "how long has this been going on?" gets an answer instead of a guess. And because diet and gut are old dance partners, it will point out when trouble keeps arriving a week after a food change: a pattern owners almost never spot from inside the week.

Everything above is a screening habit, not a diagnosis. But it moves you from "the dog seemed off, I don't know" to walking into a consult with a timeline, a photo and a pattern, and that is the difference between one vet visit and three.