Another Case of Bloat

About 6 weeks ago another one of my dogs bloated. It was about midnight and he was kind of puffing air out of his mouth. I thought that was odd so stayed up with him for awhile. It seemed to stop and he went and laid down, so I went to sleep thinking I had come ever so close to another bloat and potentially dead dog, but avoided it.

I woke up around 6:30 AM and found him puffing air out again, and then he began throwing up foam. OK at this point there is no doubt that it was bloat. I quickly got dressed, put him in the car, and drove to the nearest emergency vet. Luckily I got him to the vet on time, and they were able to stick a tube down his throat and evacuate the gas.

But while I was waiting, they are thinking they're going to have to do surgery. So they get in and do x-rays to see if he's had torsion, and how bad it is. Then the vet comes out with a cost estimate. She says $6,000. I about fell out of my chair. At this point what are you going to say? They wanted half down, and I wasn't going to say "yeah OK just euthanize him". I gave her my credit card and ouch! they charged me $3,000. I slinked away depressed, they said they would call me later and let me know how things were going.

It was a few hours later that they called and informed me the surgery wouldn't be necessary. Turns out there had been no torsion-so death looked in the eye and averted-this time. The dog is a German Shepherd so I knew he was at high risk.

So they sent me home with some gastric motility medication, and instructions to feed him 4 times a day and get a prophylactic gastropexy.