Harriet has megacolon. I believe she developed this some years ago when one of my co-workers was feeding her massive amounts of cheap Meow Mix kibble on the sly. She desperately wanted Harriet to like her but Harriet never did. When this co-worker would try to pet Harriet, she would growl and bite her. She discovered that feeding Harriet junk whenever she wanted made Harriet somewhat tolerate her. She gained a ton of weight and soon after started having problems going to the bathroom. One day I saw her going back & forth between the boxes over and over, but she didn't produce anything. Same thing next day. Went to the vet, they cleaned her out and sent her home. Same thing happened a few days later. They cleaned her out, sent her home. Repeat. They finally said to give her 1ml of Lactulose daily. That did nothing. They said give it twice a day. She also despised the lactulose and it was nearly impossible to get it into her. After going to the vet 5 times in as many weeks I took her to a different one. They told me where to get the Lactulose flavored and also prescribed cisapride (Propulsid). 2 years ago, we added Miralax mixed in her wet food. She does okay on this but she did get completely backed up again in December so she had to go to the vet to cleaned out. The cisapride is a tablet, Lactulose is liquid (we get it flavored) and the Miralax gets mixed in her wet food. Only one co-worker is willing to give Harriet the pill & liquid and he doesn't work on weekends. Harriet is the reason I started working 6 days a week. On Sundays she only gets the Miralax. Except for the occasional problem where she gets really backed up for some reason, skipping her medication one day a week has worked out well. I don't like letting her go 2 days in a row because she has had problems pooping before when I couldn't work on the weekend. She is on 2ml of Lactulose twice a day (down from 4ml several years ago), 1/3 tsp of Miralax and 5mg cisapride (all twice daily).
We have a large dog cage for harriet. I like to see her poop at least every other day. If she goes 2 days without pooping, she gets put in the cage at night (she has a littler box, bed, food & water). She knows that when she gets put in the cage she's supposed to poop and many times she goes right into the litterbox and does it and then demands to be let out of the cage. Harriet also has a tendency to eat stuff she shouldn't. Dry leaves and plastic are her favorites. She usually pukes the leaves back up but often they come out the other end. She had to have a looooong piece of plastic, not sure if it was something like Saran wrap or packing tape, removed a few years ago. That was back at our old office where the store workers were pigs and left garbage all over the floor.
