The General and I started our pet resort knowing nothing about the kennel business, other than what we didn’t like about it. This was in 1998, when the internet was just starting to be a thing. We didn’t have HTML content. We didn’t have – gasp – social networks. We were using modems.
Pages loaded at roughly the speed of a boyfriend entering a movie theatre where his girlfriend has dragged him to watch The Notebook for the third time.
Despite these handicaps, I persevered with an online search to find out what information I could about how to create and run a boarding kennel. Lord love the Americans. They have a professional organisation for everything, and were early adopters of technology. My search disclosed that there was something called the American Boarding Kennel Association. After going for a five kilometer walk, cooking dinner and finishing ‘War and Peace’ while I waited for their website to load, I found out that this organisation gave seminars on “How to Build and Operate a Boarding Kennel.” The General and I packed our bags and headed to Colorado Springs.
We heard everything from the precise degree your floors should slope towards your drains, to the weird suggestion that we needed to buy a scale so we could weigh dogs when they arrived and when they left. After sixteen years in the business, I still can’t figure out what that was about.
What we didn’t want to hear was this:
“If you are in the business long enough, one morning you will arrive at your kennel to find a dog has died in the night. Chances are very high that the dog will have died from bloat.”
Wait – what? The General and I looked at each other in consternation. No, no and no. That couldn’t be a real possibility, let alone high probability! Could it?
And what was this ‘bloat’ of which she spoke?
The answer to the first question is that yes, it could happen and did happen in our pet resort. More than once.
As for the second, the official name for bloat is Gastric Dilatation Volvulus (GDP). The stomach has two openings; the esophagus, where food comes into the stomach from the throat, and the duodenum where the digested food leaves the stomach for its trip down the intestinal tract.
Imagine those two openings twisting around on themselves, like the way you twist the top of a plastic bag to close it. Bloat occurs when the stomach expands with gas and fluids. This buildup causes the stomach to turn on itself, resulting in both ends being twisted, closing off the openings
Gas and fluids ferment, pressure builds up even more. Blood supply to the stomach is cut off, as is the normal flow of blood to other organs, including the heart and liver. Tissue can die. The stomach can rupture.
If untreated, death will almost certainly follow from blood poisoning, peritonitis and/or shock.
Big, deep chested breeds are more at risk than small dogs. Statistically speaking, the five breeds most likely to bloat are Great Danes, Weimaraners, St. Bernards, Gordon Setters and Irish Setters. In Great Danes, the lifetime risk of bloating is estimated at between 37% and 42%.
But bloat has occurred in every breed of dogs. Even cats get it.
Male dogs are almost twice as likely to bloat as female dogs. Dogs over the age of seven are statistically more prone to bloat.
Here’s one of the most hellish thing about bloat. The symptoms are subtle. If you don’t know the dog well, the signs can literally be invisible.
Forewarned being forearmed, we investigated this condition as soon as we got back from our seminar. Going by what we read, we kept an eye out for any dog being in high distress with a visibly distended abdomen. Hell, even the common name “bloat” conveys the expectation of what you should be seeing. An abdomen that looks as if the dog has swallowed a beach ball, as one ‘expert’ told us. Makes sense. I know when I’m bloated, my pants won’t even zip up.
Turns out, not so’s you’d notice.
After dealing with at least a half dozen cases of bloat, I can honestly say that the best measure by which to judge if your dog is bloating is whether or not your dog seems to be his or her usual self. Is she acting a little weird, in a passive way? She may stand and stare at the wall, hang her head, appear depressed, weak or withdrawn. She may be stiff-legged and bowing her back.
Yes, the abdomen may be slightly distended, but let’s face it, how many of us know how distended our dog’s abdomen is at any given hour of any given day? With a dog carrying a big coat, it’s not that clear where the coat ends and the belly begins.The abdomen may feel abnormally firm, but again, how well can you identify the usual degree of surface tension in your dog’s abdomen?
Here is a picture of a dog who could be in the early stages of bloat. Fixed, glassy stare, slight – very slight – distension of the abdomen.
Here is a picture of a dog who is not bloating.
What’s the difference? Well, there is life and interest in the eyes of the Golden Retriever. Her posture is more relaxed. And for those of us who aren’t vets, that is, quite honestly, about the magnitude of the difference you may pick up when your dog is in the early stages of bloat.
As the condition gets worse, her distress will become more obvious, but by that time, it may be too late. Here’s a video of a dog where the condition has advanced to critical. Someone at the veterinary clinic took this dog outside while they were waiting for the x-rays so they could proceed with the operation. This dog is clearly in distress. But it’s too late. The dog was euthanized a short while later.
Other symptoms?
Their gums will become increasingly pale as the blood supply shuts down. It’s not a bad idea to familiarise yourself with how your dog’s mouth looks normally. Too red or too pale gums can indicate a number of conditions, like the onset of heat stroke.
When the esophagus is closed off, it prevents the dog from relieving the discomfort of the abdominal pressure by vomiting or even burping or farting.
They may retch or gag with no vomit, only foamy, ropy saliva. If your dog is vomiting, it’s actually a pretty good sign they are not bloating.
Next time you’re cleaning up vomit, or trying not to pass out from your Bulldog’s latest gas attack, remember to be grateful that at least you can be sure your dog is not bloating.
Heart arrhythmia can be a sign of bloat. But it can signify other problems too.
Even vets don’t always know what they’re seeing from just a visual examination and abdominal palpations. Our (truly excellent) vet examined one dog we took to him because we were worried he was bloating. After a quick exam, the vet thought it was a heart incident, but he said he would do an x-ray anyway, just to rule out bloat and calm my fears. The x-ray showed that Doug was indeed bloating.
Here’s another hellish thing about bloat. Death can follow in hours – or even minutes – from the onset of bloat.
You can go to bed after having said goodnight to a perfectly healthy dog, and come downstairs in the morning to find he has died for no apparent reason.
If you are fortunate enough to be around when your dog is bloating and you become concerned that you are seeing the insidious, subtle changes in her behaviour may mean she’s bloating, grab her and get to the vet’s as fast as you can. Deciding to wait and see if she gets worse is most likely signing her death warrant.
After we did indeed come to the kennel one morning and find a dog dead from bloat, we proceeded on the policy of ‘better safe than sorry’ and took any dog we had doubts about to the vet right away. One vet to whom I took a dog that I feared was bloating (it was, and it was saved) told me that she had a friend who was babysitting a Giant Schnauzer. The dog started to look a bit strange – standing still with a hanging head. The guy who was dog sitting called his friend the vet to ask if he should be concerned. The vet said, “It might be bloat; get him in here asap.” The dog died in the car on the way to the vet’s.
Some cases of bloat can be relieved by decompressing the stomach via insertion of a tube into the stomach. There are home remedy kits that allow you to do this yourself, but the success rate is extremely low. This would typically only be an interim measure to try to keep your dog alive while you get him to the vet, or a procedure that the vet might do, to give more time for the surgery to be decided upon, prepared for and carried out.
Quick treatment is absolutely necessary if your dog is to have his best chance of survival. Every minute counts.
But here’s the third hellish thing about bloat. Even with surgery, about 20% to 30% of dogs will die anyway.
Twenty years ago the mortality rate was as high as 50%. Better treatments for shock, better surgical techniques and better anesthetics account for the improvement.
Complications can occur even after surgery and can be impossible to predict. These include heart arrhythmia, blood loss, death of part of the stomach wall, requiring a stomach resectioning, torsion of the spleen, aspiration of pneumonia, when part of the stomach contents get into the lungs,
And let’s not forget the icing on the top of this turd cupcake. The treatment is hellishly expensive.
Costs can range from $2,000 to $5000. The price can even go above $8,000, depending on a number of factors. Big city vets tend to charge more than those in small towns, because of higher overhead. You may be sent to a larger centre anyway, because a small town vet may not have the facilities available to perform the surgery. If this occurs after regular office hours, you’ll be looking at the higher fees for after hours services. Complications will increase the bill, as will a lengthy stay at a 24 hour clinic. The dog will usually kept for two to three days at a minimum to ensure they can be monitored and give prompt treatment in case of complications.
If you own a large, deep chested breed of dog, the possibility of bloat might be a good reason to consider paying health insurance for your dog.
What causes bloat? Can it be prevented?
It now seems to be generally accepted that there is as yet, no clinically proven cause for bloat in dogs. You will still read that it occurs because of overfeeding, or feeding dry food as opposed to canned food, or feeding high fat food as opposed to lower fat food. You can find sites that tell you not to let your dog drink too much water too close to being exercised, or take them out for exercise too soon before or after eating.
When we ran the pet resort, many, many people with big dogs, especially Great Danes, asked us to make sure their food was on a stool or other raised surface. At that time, the theory was that having to extend their necks and heads downwards to eat was a causative factor in bloat. Something about that posture, it was thought, made them take in too much air with their food.
After this claim was clinically studied in 2000, it was found that eating from a raised platform actually contributes to bloat.
Now, if you search online, you will be told not to put your Great Dane’s food on a stool. But you will also see sites where the out of date information is still being disseminated, and told feeding on a stool is a way to prevent bloat.
We also used to be told (and some sites still say it) to soak dry food on the theory that this will release some of the gas from the food and let the food expand outside the stomach, not inside. In researching this article, I came across information stating that this too, can increase – not decrease – the risk of bloat, especially if citric acid is listed as one of the preservatives in the dry dog food. I’ve also read that letting food soak for longer than twenty minutes can cause the grain in dry foods to ferment, increasing the risk of bloat.
One study showed that dogs perceived by their owner as happy were less likely to get it than dogs perceived as nervous or fearful.
There are more theories then there are clinically proven facts.
Speaking authoritatively about preventing a syndrome, when no one knows what actually causes the syndrome to occur in the first place, is self-evidently guess work at best and damaging at worst (as with the example of people being told to feed on a raised platform).
Some advice is relatively benign, such as feeding your dog several smaller meals rather than one or two big ones, or feeding them from a ‘go-slow’ bowl. These things can’t hurt and may help.
If you have a high risk dog, like a Great Dane, you can consider preventative surgery to tack the stomach to the abdominal wall, so it cannot flip over on itself. This can now be done with laser keyhole surgery. It can also be done if your dog is undergoing anaesthesia anyway, say for a dental procedure or a spay/neuter. But even with this surgery, they can still get bloat. The stomach won’t twist though, and the dog will be able to burp and vomit. You will have more time to get them to the vet.
My best advice is, be aware of your dog’s normal demeanour, and take note if that demeanour changes.
This is how we identified the half dozen or so cases of bloat that occurred at the pet resort.
Familiarise yourself with how your dog’s gums and abdomen normally look and feel. If you own a big, deep chested dog, you may want to follow the benign advice to feed small amounts frequently, take measures to make them eat slowly, and not exercise them for an hour after they eat. You may even consider the preventive surgery.
We used to use bloat as the example of the very worst case scenario when it came time to ask our clients if they wanted to limit the amount of money they would authorize us to spend at the vet on their behalf while their dog was boarding with us. You’ve got a sudden onset condition, that, for there to be any real chance of survival, requires an incredibly expensive operation. There’s a real chance the dog may not survive the surgery. And the decision has to be made as quickly as possible. Every minute counts.
It’s a hard, hard decision to be faced with.
One final word. If you think your dog is bloating, even if you decide against the surgery, you need to get her to the vet. Without surgery, 95% of bloating dogs will die. At the very least, you can have her humanely euthanized instead of leaving her to die in pain.