Episode 109: What is Bloat and How is It Detected and Treated

Robb Lust, The Dog Professor from The Edgefield Animal Care Center, talks about Bloat. It's a dangerous condition, mainly in bigger dogs that comes about quickly due to air inside their stomach. he details the signs of it, what to do when you see the signs and how your vet will treat it.
learn more at www.EdgefieldAnimalCare.com

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Joining me in studio today is theDog Professor, Rob Lust from the edge
Field of Animal Care Center. It'sanother episode of the Dog Professor podcast and
rob Our topic today is something thatwe've talked about before, that you have
addressed before, but something that hasrecently come back in that you want to
reiterate and you want people to knowabout the bloat. Yeah, bloat or

(00:21):
it's gastric dilatation vulvulus complex also knownas bloat. We've we've talked about it
in Passing I believe in the Breedseries when we talked about the different breeds
and the possibilities for bloat in thosedifferent breeds. And and a lot of
people know it as a torsion ora twisted stomach or whatever. And it's
it's it's a devastating situation to dealwith with your dog. It's extremely dangerous

(00:48):
because even with intensive treatment, thirtypercent of the dogs that get it still
end up passing away from it.So it's it's and and the frustrating part
about it is that a lot oftimes, as much as you can do
to try to prevent this from occurring, it still occurs. Right, So
there's no there's no, you dothis, you'll never have this problem is

(01:14):
it's a very big issue and it'ssomething that everybody with big dogs normally need
to be aware of. And whatit is is basically, the stomach fills
up with air, okay, andas the stomach fills up with air,
it kind of twists at either end, all right, and the blood stops
flowing to the hind legs. Andthe problem when the stomach twists is that

(01:37):
it actually takes the pancreas and everythingalong with it, and the pancreas starts
to build up toxic chemicals within thebody that can't be gotten rid of,
and that actually starts to attack yourdog's heart. Once that blood builds,
that blood stops flowing to the backend of the dog, starts to go
into shock. It starts to attack. It's hard, and then things go

(02:00):
downhill pretty quick after that. Therereally is you know, over over a
period of time, people are tryingto figure out how does this occur?
Why why does this occur? Andpeople don't don't know if the stomach flips
because air builds up in the stomach, or if air builds up in the

(02:20):
stomach because the stomach flips Okay,So so there's been a lot of studies
on trying to figure out exactly whythis occurs, and it's just it's just
never, well, this this happens. So what ends up happening a lot
of times is you'll see an enlargementof the dog's abdomen. You'll see them
really acting like they're in pain,they don't want to move, they might
be salivating, they might be tryingto vomit, but nothing's really occurring when

(02:46):
they vomit. When we see that, it's it's an immediate thing. You
need to get immediate medical attention orwe're going to have real problems. And
a lot of times what's happened isall the doctors can do right away is
one they try to treat the shock, because the shock is what kills the

(03:07):
dog quicker than anything else. Andthen two, surgically, they'll have to
go in and move the stomach backaround and basically they'll tack the stomach to
the side of the dog's body wallso that it prevents that from occurring again.
But it's a surgical procedure. Andthen the problem is is if if

(03:28):
they've had this bloat for a periodof time, and like I said,
the spleen and the pancreas they're alreadytwisted around along with the with the stomach,
and they're releasing those toxins that attackthe heart. It's not super uncommon,
and a lot of dogs, eventhough they go in, they get
the shock treated, they get thestomach twisted back around and everything's fine,

(03:52):
they're in recovery, and then aday or two later they end up passing
away because of a Most studies showthat it's attacking the heart as it's going
on. Yeah yeah, yeah,so that ends up causing the problem that
doesn't show up till necessarily later.So it's a it's a bad thing.

(04:12):
It occurs a lot more often thannot in larger dogs, larger dogs with
tall dogs with kind of narrow ribcages. Think of a Great Dane.
Great Danes are the prime example ofa breed of dog that has issues with
that. Saint Bernard's you know,those those all those large dogs like that

(04:35):
are are it's a possibility that theycan have that issue. Sometimes. You
know, there's been other things likeokay, well what's a trigger? You
know, so a lot of timesyou hear people with large dogs, you
know, they're told, well,elevate the food. Elevate the food because
or you know, if your dogeats a bunch of food, drinks a

(04:58):
bunch of water, then you geta bunch of stuff, build up,
gas, build up in the stomach, and so forth and so on.
The raising of the food when itcomes to torsion is not necessarily something that
they found changes the chances at all. What raising the food does for large
dogs is help with what's called megasophagus, which is a swallowing issue. You

(05:20):
know, if the food's got togo uphill then downhill, that that causes
wear and tear on the esophagus overtime. So raising the raising the level
of feeding helps in those cases.But they've studies have shown that they don't
necessary doesn't necessarily matter one way orthe other a lot of times when it
comes to torsion. So long storyshort, you've got a big dog,

(05:44):
you're not going to hurt anything,but you're probably possibly going to help if
you raise the food and elevate thefood sixty eight inches off the ground.
Other things is they've found in studiesis that dogs that are fed once a
day instead of dogs that are feda couple times a day are much more
likely to encounter torsion or GDV becausethey tend to eat all their food,

(06:10):
their whole entire days worth of foodin one sitting, so they're gulping it
down fast. Or anxious dogs thathave anxiety while they're eating, so they
end up you know, they maybethey were raised with twelve litter mates and
they had to fight for all thefood they got, so their speed eating.
They're eating as fast as they can, and they're bringing in as much
air as they are food much airand everything else as they can't. So

(06:30):
that's what causes a lot of thatissue. So slow feeders help with that.
Feeding a couple meals a day orthree meals a day help with that.
Even wetting dry food, you know, we do that a lot with
dogs in our in our kennel thatare really high energy and they're bouncing off
the walls and everything like that willwet down the food a little bit because

(06:54):
it makes it easy. It makesit less likely to kind of blow up
in their stomach if the food hasalready blown up in the bowl. If
you've ever seen what wet food,what dry food does when it gets wet,
it just expands, right, Okay, so by doing that that helps
out a little bit too to preventthat type of issue, because the last
thing you want your dog to dois eat a full bowl of food,

(07:15):
just like you know your mom toldyou when it when you ate or you're
swimming it is. You don't wantyour dog to eat a whole bowl of
food, run up, drink abunch of water, go outside, and
then roll around on its back onthe ground. You know, even when
we when we have dogs, bigdogs that come in for surgery and we
necessitize them, we lay them onone side, and when we roll them

(07:39):
back up, we roll them backup the same direction that we laid them
down. We don't roll them overroll over. Teaching your dog to roll
over is a possible problem with torsion. With that, Okay, it's not
going to cause it, but it'snot something to do. Good do a
lot with bigger dogs and everything.So that's kind of how you kind of

(08:05):
pay attention to it. What's theearly signs of it, Well, the
early signs usually are the dogs abdomenexpanding or vomiting something like that, and
then once they start shutting down anddon't want to do anything. That's when
you have a have a real problem. So a lot of times the first
thing they do, the doctor willdo is release, release as much as
the from of the gas from thestomach as they can, so then they

(08:28):
can surgically go in and and andtwist the stomach back. But the moment
that thing twists, the stomach wallstarts to die, so there may be
parts of the stomach wall that haveto be surgically removed from that stomach and
then so it's just a real issueand a real problem. Genetics are a
key with that. If your dog'sparents had a problem with torsion, then

(08:52):
it's highly likely that your dog hasthat same genetic makeup to have that same
issue. That's why it's important totalk to your anarian if you find that
out and find out if preventative stomachtacking is something that you want to do.
The surgery where they attack the stomach, it doesn't necessarily totally prevent it,
but it definitely raises the odds thatit's not going to happen to that

(09:15):
dog in that particular case. Soit's serious stuff. It is serious,
and it's it's it's devastating because yourdog's happy and happy, go lucky one
minute, and then within the nextcouple of hours it's on deathbeds. Wow.
See that's the thing. You know, you talk about the possibility of
early signs, doesn't sound like thereare. And that's why it's so frustrating
for people you know, and frustratingfor veterinarians, and frustrating for everybody,

(09:37):
because nobody really has the exact answerswhy it occurs, are the exact way
to prevent it and everything else.There's just things you can do to help
prevent it as much as you can. Wow. That sounds like if you
have those breeds, those Saint Bernard'sGerman shepherds, Rottweilers, boxers, great
Danes, especially if you're thinking aboutgetting those aids, talk to your veterinarian

(10:01):
about that and ways that you canprevent that as you go. So your
best recommendation keep the food six toeight inches up, maybe feed multiple times
a day, make sure you tryto maybe wet down the dry food if
that's what you're giving them, Andthose are types of things that will help
you, especially if you've got aspeed eater. Speed eaters that gulp just
gulp it down. If you've ifyou've ever seen your dog throw up after

(10:22):
they've eaten and it looks basically likethe food that was in the bowl.
Yeah, twenty minutes ago. Yougot a speed eater. So all those
all those steps or something you needto practice with that docta dog great stuff.
Tell people how they can get aholdof you and the doctors everyone in
Edgefield Animal Care Center. Edgefield AnimalCare Center is a full service pet care

(10:43):
facility where a veterinary hospital, boarding, grooming training. You can get all
our information, get all the DogProfessor podcasts linked up to iHeartRadio. Got
all that information at Edgefield Animalcare dotcom. Yep, it's good stuff.
You'll see him on social media too. This is the Dog Professor podcast.
If you're finding it for the firsttime, hit follow. Every time we

(11:07):
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the back episodes of the Dog Professorpodcast. They are pretty evergreen and they'll
help you with any pet in yourhousehold.