Our Gut Health Test kits for cats and dogs contain everything you need to collect a small sample of your pet’s stool and send it to our laboratory. When we receive your pet’s sample, we first extract the DNA from all the bacteria. A fecal sample about the size of a pea will contain roughly one billion bacterial cells. Using DNA sequencing and powerful analytic software, we identify all the types of bacteria living in your pet’s gut.
Then, we compare your cat’s or dog’s results to our large and growing database of healthy pets to determine how closely the types and amounts of bacteria in your pet’s gut match that healthy reference set. We can detect any bacterial imbalances, identify any key groups that are missing, and flag any “bad actors” that may be causing troublesome symptoms, like diarrhea or itchy skin.