Dog showing some discomfort after eating.

[Houdini1220]

I plan to call my vet on Monday. On a few occasions my one dog has suddenly walked away from her food…stretched really slowly and then laid down. Usually the discomfort passes in about 30 to 60 seconds and then she is acting perfectly fine again.

She does eat quicky so I started adding a pretty good amount of water to her food. She now has to “chase” the food in the water and it seems to slow her down.

That seemed to have solved the problem for a few weeks, but now two days in a row she has had the same reaction while eating even with the water in her food.

She gets the Wellness dry food which does have pretty large pieces.

Like I said, I plan to call my vet tomorrow…but could it be the larger pieces that are giving her a problem?

[microbovine]

Torsion comes to mind. Here’s a link on prevention:

http://www.vethelpdirect.com/vetblog/2011/03/16/gastric-torsion-in-dogs/

[Houdini1220]

Interesting…would something like that happen in less than a min though? It happens before she even finishes eating and she doesn’t take more than a min to eat…and would it ease up on it’s own so quickly. I also don’t see any bloating at all, but I can see that she is having what look like stomach spasms.

[Horsegal984]

Two things- one get a video of it if you can. And teo, any other GI symptoms? Hard keeper, intermittent soft stools, occasional vomiting, sensitive stomach etc?

I doubt it’s due to the size of the pieces, and I promise it’s not torsion. The flip occurs very suddenly but the symptoms are a little slower to come on. They also do not resolve on their own.

She could very well be gulping air though, and needing to burn etc to relive the gas pressure before continuing a meal. Similar to us gulping a carbonated beverage.

[Houdini1220]

[QUOTE=Horsegal984;6988875]
Two things- one get a video of it if you can. And teo, any other GI symptoms? Hard keeper, intermittent soft stools, occasional vomiting, sensitive stomach etc?

I doubt it’s due to the size of the pieces, and I promise it’s not torsion. The flip occurs very suddenly but the symptoms are a little slower to come on. They also do not resolve on their own.

She could very well be gulping air though, and needing to burn etc to relive the gas pressure before continuing a meal. Similar to us gulping a carbonated beverage.[/QUOTE]

I have owned her for a year and a half and she has only vomited twice the whole time I have had her. Her stool is well formed. She did have a hernia that was caught when she was spayed, but that was repaired. I could see that she might be gulping a lot of air. I want to try and pick up one of those slow feeder bowls and see if that helps.

[danceronice]

What Horsegal said is what I was thinking–torsion/bloat doesn’t just go away, but the stretching and fast eating sounds like she might be eating fast and giving herself gas/air bubbles. My corgi sometimes needs a good burp after she slorps her water up too fast.

[scierra]

Try feeding her out of a muffin pan. That’s what a friend of mine is doing with her new dog that eats to fast.

[Bacardi1]

Does Wellness offer the same food in smaller pieces?

I don’t feed Wellness, but did have some problems when I fed regular large-adult-size kibble to my dogs. They always wolfed it down whole - no chewing - regardless of how much water or broth I added. (I always add water or broth to my dogs’ kibble.)

Then I switched over to the same type of food, but in the “Little Bites” form, normally meant for small dogs. MUCH smaller pieces. No more problems. I can only guess that the smaller pieces are much easier to digest when swallowed whole.