It can happen to the best of us, your dog starts vomiting…..
Lillie is a monster, likely if you have been to the clinic on a weekend you have seen her here up front with Marion our receptionist, she is a sock thief and rarely follows her suggested diet from the Canada’s Food Guide.
Really and truly Lillie will eat anything, leaves, sticks, toys, blanket stuffing, she is well known around the clinic for her diet. A few weeks ago she met her match, blanket stuffing that was pulled from her sister Lexi’s favourite blanket in the living room (that’s an entirely different blog) unknown to us Lillie ate the blanket stuffing for lunch and began to vomit as it was obstructing her gastrointestinal tract. She was brought to the vet and had some x-rays taken, they were a little suspect but there wasn’t really anything to be seen on them. While she was at the vet she had a big drink and about 20 minutes later she vomited the whole drink up. We were, to say the least very worried about our little girl as she was also very lethargic and not herself she was also stretching a lot and was unable to get comfortable at all.
We took her home as she couldn’t really be left alone overnight and if there was an emergency decision to be made we could make it overnight and take her to get the appropriate care. Lillie was tired but ok overnight until about 6am the next morning when she vomited the most disgusting smelling liquid, off to the emergency vet for her!
At the emergency vet she was placed on IV fluids, she had bloodwork and an ultrasound done where it was determined that she had in fact ingested blanket stuffing, the ultrasonographer felt that we could wait her out for 12 or so hours to see if it moved, (this was done under the supervision of a veterinarian, you should never wait with your dog at home) Lillie was admitted to the hospital and given pain medication and an antacid to hopefully make her a little more comfortable while we crossed our fingers and waited. We drove home to wait.
The next afternoon we went to visit Ms. Lillie, she seemed brighter and had kept food down! We took her for a little walk and low and behold she passed the fluff in her stool. We were lucky and so was Lillie as we came very close to going in surgically to remove that fluff!
In no way is this blog a suggestion that if your pet is vomiting you should wait to see your vet, intestinal blockages are very serious and can escalate quickly with intestinal perforations and possibly death. Your veterinarian should always be your first line of information they truly do care about your pets well-being.
Check out Ms. Lillie making sure her requests are made to Santa while at the emergency hospital. Our request from Santa is a basket muzzle to stop her from eating things when we aren’t looking.
Written by Mclean Animal Hospital
