Most commonly occurs two to three hours after eating a large meal.
recalls Linda. “She just wasn’t eating properly, she was whining, she couldn’t get comfortable… by the morning time she couldn’t even stand up.” That’s when Linda says she and her husband raced their dog to the vet, where
Brandie had to undergo surgery.
The surgery saved Brandie, but there was a lot of damage done internally. Two years later, Brandie got bloat again, “and there was absolutely nothing they could do for her. It was pretty tough,” Linda says.
When she recognized similar signs of bloat with Lucy years later, she sprang into action. “I touched her tummy and she was literally shaking, it was rock hard, and I knew immediately,” Linda says. She rushed her dog to the emergency vet.
Linda got Lucy to the vet in time, where the Boxer had surgery, which included relieving the gas from the stomach. No oxygen was lost from Lucy’s vital organs “because we got her in so quickly that they saved her,” Linda says. “Most times, it’s a death sentence for dogs.”
To prevent bloat, Dr. Walton recommends speaking with your veterinarian when your dog is a puppy. “We can tack the stomach to the wall when we’re going in to spay them or neuter them. It’s an extra surgery but, you know, it decreases the risk, and on some of these breeds, it’s common enough that it’s justifiable.”
“The main thing that I tell owners is this idea…of letting a dog free feed is a disaster waiting to happen,” says Dr. Walton. “Dogs will gorge themselves, and that just increases the risk.”
“Just small meals throughout the day, two or three feedings—especially if your dog is one of those at-risk breeds— is essential,” he advises.
Calling bloat a “time bomb,” the vet says if you do not recognize the signs of GDV in your pet in time, “the dog is dead. It literally is one of those things where you have a short window of a few hours to recognize what’s going on and take your dog to your veterinarian or the emergency clinic.”
“This is one thing that I think I cannot stress enough,” says Dr. Walton. “Yes, emergency clinics are expensive, but the cost to fix a dog that has just bloated a few hours ago versus a dog that has somehow survived the night and is brought into your vet first thing in the morning is dramatically more challenging,” adding it will include several more visits to the vet, “but the most likely situation is you go to bed— and you wake up to a dead dog.”