Bloat
Have you heard of the term "bloat"? Bloat is known as life threatening condition especially for deep chested large dogs. It is very serious condition and require emergency care if it happened to your dogs. Not every dogs get bloated, but I think people with dogs should know the conditions/symptoms of bloat so that they can react to it accordingly.
So, what is "bloat"?
According to Dog owner's guide site,with bloat, your dog's stomach gets fill with gas and turn, twisted, which cause your dog's esophagus closed off, and that makes dogs hard to belch or vomit to relieve distention. When this happens, blood vessel is also pinched and organs start to give up.
You can read full article on canine bloat at Dog Owner's Guide here.
What are the common symptoms you can look for?
Symptoms include dogs try to vomit/belch but unsuccessful, very tight tummy like drum, lack of digestive gurgling sound, restless, etc..
What cause dogs to bloat?
I have found that there was a study conducted by Glickman VMD on canine bloat, and study was published in American Veterinary Medicine Association Journals in 2000. According to the study (you can read how the study was done here, and you can read study's result here.), dogs who eat rapidly, or dogs who eat food from raised food bowl, dogs who eat dry food that contains fat among first 4 ingredient, and dogs who eat moistened dry food that contained citric acid seem to have more chance to get bloated.
I used to feed kibble, and Palette ate the kibble very very first as if I did not feed her for weeks, and as soon as she finishes her meal, she headed to water bowl, and she drank lots of water. I mean, a lot of water. Then, she either burps big or she vomited out the water she just had on kitchen floor.
Later, I leaned that kibble expand quite a lot when liquid is added. You can pour kibble in bowl and pour warm water and let it sit, and see how much it expand. That is how it will be like in dogs' stomach. So, I started wet the kibble before feeding not to expand that much in her stomach and fill the stomach with gas which caused her to burp, but when I was reading on topic of moistening the kibble,I read that you should not add water to kibble if the kibble you feed had citric acid in it. That warning maybe coming from possible cause of bloat.
When I fed moisten kibble with water, Palette stopped heading to water bowl to drink huge amount of water, and burping issue was decreased a lot. Rarely burped.
We did not feed her from raised bowl and, I am not sure why raised bowl can be a cause of bloat but one other thing I did with Palette was to offer kibble spitting interactive toy called "Buster cube". You can get it at pet store. Ours was diced shape and it had hole on center where you put kibble in and if you prefer, you can adjust how much of kibble is spit out per hit. You can visit Buster cube official website here.
Palette loved this buster cube and she nosed it around on floor and worked to get the kibble out to floor. If she rolled it right angle,right speed,she got about 10 pieces of kibble bit or so and it was very entertaining to watch her rolling the buster cube. As long as materials/food inside the Buster cube is small and dry, you can put anything in it.
First time she saw this toy, she had no idea how to get the kibble in the buster cube. She paws at it, whined, bit... but she figured it out herself how to get to it and meal time became fun time for her. One day, I rolled it on the floor slowly just to try her Buster cube. It is more difficult than what you think. She noses it around on the floor, and she gets kibble/treats out but I got none spits out. Palette was definitely pro for Buster cube.
One caution though if you are thinking about getting buster cube for your dog. It is best if your flooring were carpeted rather than wooden floor because material made is plastic and it is noisy if it was rolled on wooden floor or non carpeted floor.
Recently, I have put small treats inside the buster cube for her to enjoy, and videotaped it to show you what the buster cube is like. Watch how Palette enjoys her Buster cube bellow. If you are a blog subscriber or reading from facebook,please click here to watch the video.
Palette and Buster cube
She enjoys her buster cube. She is very good at nosing it around. At the very end, she needed help from me. The buster cube went under the kitchen cart...
Since she is not fed kibble anymore, she does not play with buster cube much. She often enjoys my homemade instant cereal box buster cube when she taste testing biscuits we bake to ship out. She gets excited, gets wet nose and she shakes and tear cereal box to get to biscuits in the box. This is also interesting to watch.
How she plays with instant cereal box buster cube? You can see her play in previous entry titled "Palette's note:Baguette biscuits " After she gets biscuits in the box, she does her own exercise regime.How she does it? You can see her exercising with cereal box with previous entry titled "Exercise, Palette's way"
Palette is Corgi, not deep chested. But knowing there is a condition called bloat, how you can identify it, and if you have fast speed eater, letting them eat slower would not hurt.
Writing this entry got me thinking, I maybe should find an emergency vet information for just in case. We have vet clinic we go to when Palette needed to go see but they may not open 24 hours. Knowing where you can make a call for emergency care would be plus.
Do you have emergency care clinic information on hand all the time?
Many dog articles talk about how not to exercise after meal. Palette and I go for walk before meal, rest more than one hour or so (just to let her cool down on her favorite cool bed), and when her breathing backed to normal, I usually feed her.
Palette resting on her cool bed after walk..
Do you go for walk before meal or after meal?
So, what is "bloat"?
According to Dog owner's guide site,with bloat, your dog's stomach gets fill with gas and turn, twisted, which cause your dog's esophagus closed off, and that makes dogs hard to belch or vomit to relieve distention. When this happens, blood vessel is also pinched and organs start to give up.
You can read full article on canine bloat at Dog Owner's Guide here.
What are the common symptoms you can look for?
Symptoms include dogs try to vomit/belch but unsuccessful, very tight tummy like drum, lack of digestive gurgling sound, restless, etc..
What cause dogs to bloat?
I have found that there was a study conducted by Glickman VMD on canine bloat, and study was published in American Veterinary Medicine Association Journals in 2000. According to the study (you can read how the study was done here, and you can read study's result here.), dogs who eat rapidly, or dogs who eat food from raised food bowl, dogs who eat dry food that contains fat among first 4 ingredient, and dogs who eat moistened dry food that contained citric acid seem to have more chance to get bloated.
I used to feed kibble, and Palette ate the kibble very very first as if I did not feed her for weeks, and as soon as she finishes her meal, she headed to water bowl, and she drank lots of water. I mean, a lot of water. Then, she either burps big or she vomited out the water she just had on kitchen floor.
Later, I leaned that kibble expand quite a lot when liquid is added. You can pour kibble in bowl and pour warm water and let it sit, and see how much it expand. That is how it will be like in dogs' stomach. So, I started wet the kibble before feeding not to expand that much in her stomach and fill the stomach with gas which caused her to burp, but when I was reading on topic of moistening the kibble,I read that you should not add water to kibble if the kibble you feed had citric acid in it. That warning maybe coming from possible cause of bloat.
When I fed moisten kibble with water, Palette stopped heading to water bowl to drink huge amount of water, and burping issue was decreased a lot. Rarely burped.
We did not feed her from raised bowl and, I am not sure why raised bowl can be a cause of bloat but one other thing I did with Palette was to offer kibble spitting interactive toy called "Buster cube". You can get it at pet store. Ours was diced shape and it had hole on center where you put kibble in and if you prefer, you can adjust how much of kibble is spit out per hit. You can visit Buster cube official website here.
Palette loved this buster cube and she nosed it around on floor and worked to get the kibble out to floor. If she rolled it right angle,right speed,she got about 10 pieces of kibble bit or so and it was very entertaining to watch her rolling the buster cube. As long as materials/food inside the Buster cube is small and dry, you can put anything in it.
First time she saw this toy, she had no idea how to get the kibble in the buster cube. She paws at it, whined, bit... but she figured it out herself how to get to it and meal time became fun time for her. One day, I rolled it on the floor slowly just to try her Buster cube. It is more difficult than what you think. She noses it around on the floor, and she gets kibble/treats out but I got none spits out. Palette was definitely pro for Buster cube.
One caution though if you are thinking about getting buster cube for your dog. It is best if your flooring were carpeted rather than wooden floor because material made is plastic and it is noisy if it was rolled on wooden floor or non carpeted floor.
Recently, I have put small treats inside the buster cube for her to enjoy, and videotaped it to show you what the buster cube is like. Watch how Palette enjoys her Buster cube bellow. If you are a blog subscriber or reading from facebook,please click here to watch the video.
Palette and Buster cube
Since she is not fed kibble anymore, she does not play with buster cube much. She often enjoys my homemade instant cereal box buster cube when she taste testing biscuits we bake to ship out. She gets excited, gets wet nose and she shakes and tear cereal box to get to biscuits in the box. This is also interesting to watch.
How she plays with instant cereal box buster cube? You can see her play in previous entry titled "Palette's note:Baguette biscuits " After she gets biscuits in the box, she does her own exercise regime.How she does it? You can see her exercising with cereal box with previous entry titled "Exercise, Palette's way"
Palette is Corgi, not deep chested. But knowing there is a condition called bloat, how you can identify it, and if you have fast speed eater, letting them eat slower would not hurt.
Writing this entry got me thinking, I maybe should find an emergency vet information for just in case. We have vet clinic we go to when Palette needed to go see but they may not open 24 hours. Knowing where you can make a call for emergency care would be plus.
Do you have emergency care clinic information on hand all the time?
Many dog articles talk about how not to exercise after meal. Palette and I go for walk before meal, rest more than one hour or so (just to let her cool down on her favorite cool bed), and when her breathing backed to normal, I usually feed her.
Palette resting on her cool bed after walk..
Do you go for walk before meal or after meal?
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