Symptoms of EPI

Most common:

• Weight loss
• Chronic, sometimes intermittent diarrhea
• Coprophagia (stool eating) and pica (eating non-food items)

When outward symptoms begin to show, more than 85% of the acini, the cells producing the digestive enzymes, will have atrophied. Most commonly, the dogs lose weight, often rapidly, despite voracious appetite. Puppies become stunted and generally fail to thrive.

They pass copious amounts of foul-smelling, yellowish and greasy stools of from cow-pie to watery consistency, sometimes accompanied by a lot of gas. Some dogs also vomit. They may eat their own and others' feces and other inappropriate items. Some dogs develop food aggression; after all, they're literally starving, no matter how much they ingest.