Rocky's Bloat Scare

This is not a Tara story, but I wrote it on another of my blogs about an experience Tara's friend Rocky and his mom Sarah had the other night.

Bloat in Dogs
Bloat is a very serious health risk for many dogs, yet many dog owners know very little about it. According to the links below, it is the second leading killer of dogs, after cancer. It is frequently reported that deep-chested dogs, such as German Shepherds, Great Danes, and Dobermans are particularly at risk. .....
The technical name for bloat is "Gastric Dilatation-Volvulus" ("GDV"). Bloating of the stomach is often related to swallowed air (although food and fluid can also be present). It usually happens when there's an abnormal accumulation of air, fluid, and/or foam in the stomach ("gastric dilatation"). Stress can be a significant contributing factor also. Bloat can occur with or without "volvulus" (twisting). As the stomach swells, it may rotate 90° to 360°, twisting between its fixed attachments at the esophagus (food tube) and at the duodenum (the upper intestine). The twisting stomach traps air, food, and water in the stomach. The bloated stomach obstructs veins in the abdomen, leading to low blood pressure, shock, and damage to internal organs. The combined effect can quickly kill a dog.


Sarah called me on Thurs night around 9pm, asking if I was home, she wanted me look at Rocky because she thought he had bloat. So I told her to come right over. Rocky was huge! His stomach was so hard and almost protruding on the left side, insane. She said she thought that he might of gotten into the bag of dog food (Solid Gold's Wolf King : ) and maybe gotten 4-5 cups of food (which is about what he eats for dinner, he currently weighs about 85lbs). Rocky had gotten into the bag a few times before and it had never been an issue, so Sarah wasn't really worried about that alone, except for the fact that he also drank about a gallon of water on top of it. One of the symptoms of bloat is lack of normal digestive sounds. So I went and listened to Tara's gut and then Rocky's. When I first listened he had NO gut noise at all. I listened off and on and occasionally heard a few small noises, but nothing like when I was checking Tara's gut noises. So that was scary. Sarah was standing in our kitfchen on our phone trying to track down the local vet, and Rocky was just standing there. Not his typical self at all. Rocky is a goofy 10month old Dobie puppy, not a stand in the kitchen and look really miserable dog. He also had been gagging and threw up a lot of food in Sarah's truck on the way to my house. She made the decision to leave our house (around 9:45pm) and go into town (20 mins away- which is important because bloat can kill a dog in hours!) and buy him some Gas-X, one of the suggestions we found online. On her way there she kept trying to get in touch with the local vet. She went to his clinic and caught him as he was just getting ready to leave. He examined Rocky, told Sarah that it appeared to be bloat to him. He wasn't able to do x-rays or emergency surgery though, so he sent her to the closest emergency vet clinic another 45 mins away. On the way to the emergency clinic Sarah stops at her mom's work to get some money for the vet and called me to tell me all of the above. She said that Don (the local vet) had called the emer. clinic to tell them she was coming in with a dog with bloat and they said the price for bloat surgery was $1700 and it had to all be paid up front. Sarah didn't have $1700, her truck just died this week, etc. So when she got off the phone with me she said she was going to the clinic to have them at least do x-rays but if he needed surgery she couldn't afford it and would have to euthanize him. What a horrible phone conversation, I just felt so horrible for her. We (Oen and I) went to bed and it was all we talked about. How horrible it was. If we'd had $1700 for the surgery we would have given it to her. Everytime I woke up in the night I thought about Sarah and Rocky, and it was the first thought that occupied my mind the next morning. I didn't hear from Sarah until late in the day. She wasn't planning on going to work, but I figured she must've since she wasn't home. There were only 3 dogs at her house, Zeus - dobie, Ember - dobie, Bear - shihpoo, when I stopped by, so that didn't tell me whether Rocky lived or not either.

I finally found out that Rocky was alive. He didn't actually have true bloat, he was just incredibly bloated from eating 6+ lbs of food. He obviously got a lot more than Sarah thought he did. He did need to be seen though because eating that amount of food seriously stopped him up. They gave him a shot of something to make him vomit it all up, which took a few hours. Sarah said he literally collapsed into her arms of exhaustion when they finally brought him back out to her. The total bill was only about $250.

Lesson learned for Sarah, the food is now safely out of reach.

I went over to Sarah's today to see the x-ray they took of his gut -- there was an insane amount of food in there. Sarah said after he drank, after they got all the food out of him, everytime he moved you could hear his stretched out stomach sloshing. He is much better today. Insane, huh?