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Vomiting pets sometimes need medical care

Nadine Lober

There are many reasons domestic animals vomit. It would be beyond the scope of this short article to discuss all possible causes, so I will mention the most common as well as the treatments.Some of you take your dogs hiking or running on our beautiful mountain trails, and your dogs may find strange things to eat or chew on, such as deer bones, wild animal droppings, dead rodents and other wastes. These findings are covered with bacteria and maybe other parasites. By ingesting these, your dog is introducing all those bad ingredients into his stomach. This dietary indiscretion is the most common external cause for vomiting in dogs is dietary indiscretion. Sometimes by yelling at your dog to drop it, he only swallows it faster. This is where good training may come in handy (teaching the word “drop”). Some dogs may never get sick while others may start vomiting or have diarrhea or both. Remember that puppies tend to vacuum up anything on the ground and end up vomiting it up in the middle of the night. If you have children, there usually are a lot of toys lying around and dogs may chew them up or eat them. Ingestion of foreign objects may cause vomiting or obstruction. Other cause are medications, toxins and poisonous plants, viruses, parasites and bacteria.Internal causes of vomiting can be more severe and often require medical care. These include gastric ulcers, liver or kidney diseases, pancreatitis, and others. But regardless of the cause, vomiting damages the lining of the stomach and increases the permeability of gastric acid. This leads to more and more acid accumulating in the stomach and further damaging the lining.Persistent vomiting may eventually cause decrease appetite, increase thirst, increased salivation, abdominal pain and lethargy. Diarrhea might also start. In order to accurately diagnose the cause, a thorough history is mandatory. Blood work might not reveal any abnormalities, but if the vomiting becomes chronic then there might be changes in blood chemistries and electrolytes. Other tests include abdominal x-rays, with or without barium contrast (to detect obstructions).Most causes of acute vomiting are self-limiting and do not require treatment. Use common sense and seek medical attention if the vomiting persists. The first step to take is to withhold food or water for about eight hours or less if the vomiting is not severe. Once the vomiting stops then offer a small amount of water initially. If no vomiting occurs after the water intake, then offer small amounts of a highly digestible food such as cooked rice, boiled hamburger , chicken or low-fat cottage cheese. If vomiting continues then fluid therapy is recommended. There are anti-emetic drugs (these stop vomiting), in an injectable or oral form that your veterinarian may choose to help stop the vomiting.Don’t you wish that we could tell our pets what not to eat. We’re left to wonder why our pets enjoy eating the most rotten, spoiled, smelly junk they find. Vail, Colorado


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