Why the hell is my dog puking and how can I get her to stop?

In My Humble Opinion
1

OK, first off: she’s been to the vet. Several times, in fact, and vet can’t find anything wrong. She’s done exams, bloodwork, and two ultrasounds. All of that came back just A-OK fine & perfect.

Dog in question is an 11-ish year-old female pug. She’s in decent health, though she had a very scary bout of Myasthenia Gravis about 3 years ago. Since then, she’s been eating Wellness canned dog food off of a raised platform.

Currently, every 7 to 10 days, she seems to go through a period where she has stomach issues. She sometimes eats and then immediately vomits it all up (and it is vomit, not regurgitation; I know the difference). Or she’ll refuse to eat, and I’ve learned not to encourage her in those situations because it usually just leads to vomiting. Sometimes after not eating her morning meal, she’ll get hungry and literally howl at me until I feed her. I feed her a little, sometimes she keeps it down, other times, up it comes.

She’ll do that for a day or two, then be fine for another week or ten days.

I’d say that this ALWAYS happens right after she eats, except for one incident. We’d been out of town for 8 days, during which time she had no problems eating and no vomiting. The night we came back, she woke us up at about 2am and puked a little bit on the bed (she was sleeping with us.) It wasn’t very much and easily cleaned so no big deal. An hour later, she puked literally as much as I’ve ever seen her ever vomit up; at least a cup of liquid & dog food, maybe more. Had to get the comforter professionally cleaned. Blech.

Other than that one time, it’s always directly after eating.

She’s on one drug - Rimadyl - for her arthritis. I’m loathe to take her off it because she really has trouble walking without it. I know it’s associated with side-effects, but it works well for her and I get blood work done at least yearly to make sure it’s not causing other issues. Vet does not think her stomach problems are associated with Rimadyl. I don’t see any correlation between when she gets her pill (25 mg in the AM, half that around 6pm). She typically eats at around 10:30 am and 5pm.

We’ve tried an antiacid; it didn’t seem to make the puking any better or worse.

Any ideas? She’s lost a little weight but not so much that the vet is overly concerned. She seems healthy other than the puking, and indeed, once she’s done puking she’s lively and energetic. I’m just damn sick of cleaning up dog puke.

2

Nothing rang any bells for me, so the best I can suggest is to perhaps feed her smaller meals. If you feed her once a day, split her meal into to half-sized portions twice a day instead, for example. Or perhaps she’s eating too fast? You can buy special bowls that make the dog pick the kibble out of sections of bowl which slows them down.

3

Same problem with Blackjack. He was getting two meals a day and we split it up into three. This is also a common symptom related to pancreas and liver problems and perhaps she needs to go on a bland fat-free diet.

4

Our Lab is very puke-prone.
We specifically picked flooring that would be easy to clean because of her (slate). I’ve never been able to pin down what triggers her sensitive stomach (although when she eats wood and oranges in the back yard, that is always bad news.)

I switched to a “sensitive stomach” dog food, and that seems to help.
Also, I noticed that she would puke in the morning if she wasn’t fed as soon as she woke up (if I waited until I got back from the gym, there would be yellow foam waiting for me.

So, maybe try several small meals and see if keeping her stomach from being empty helps.

5

I hope someone has a definitive answer for this as one of my dogs has the same issue. He’s a 10-year old English Setter who, until last year, never had this type of issue before. I’ve had him to see several vets who have no real answers. He’s energetic, happy, enjoys eating, and other than the upchucking, is a perfectly normal dog. At the vet’s suggestion, I keep kibble out for him at all times, as well as water. He does seem to do marginally better if he can nibble here and there rather than have a set meal time.

I’m just incredibly tired of shampooing the rug on a daily basis. :frowning:

6

Maybe put him on a boiled white meat chicken and rice for a while and see how he tolerates it? Then gradually go back to his regular food?

After nearly 2 years of trial and error, a new vet prescribed 3 weeks on antibiotics and generic pepcid. That plus a change to a high fiber kibble has worked wonders for my 12 yr old mutt.

7

One of my dogs has been like this since puppyhood. Out of desperation, I tried a grain-free food (Taste of the Wild) and it was like I’d thrown a switch. Miraculous. It got even better when I realized his “cookies” should be grain-free as well. <forehead smack>

8

I awoke this morning to find that said dog had thrown up all over my bed - everything is soaked - mattress pad, down blanket, sheets - at least he missed the pillows. :frowning:

9

So sorry to hear about this, the dog that is, sorry but I don’t care so much about your sheets :). As you can see in this thread there are many causes for this problem, you should try out the various solutions outlined in this thread. Another thing to watch out for is over-drinking. Some dogs just lap want too much water, especially if they’ve been dehydrating themselves from puking. Blackjack would rarely drink from his water bowl so we were adding water to his food. We realized that was too much water even though he loved it. It appears that he thinks plain water is dull and he wants some flavor, and sometimes he was getting that by drinking any dirty water he found outside. One thing a vet can do is inject water under his skin to hydrate him so he’s not filling his stomach with water.

10

My vomiter is a cat,but the sensitive stomach is the same… I added a very tiny bit of plain yogurt to the wet food soup,which seems to have cut the vomiting down from every day to maybe once a week. She has always had a bad stomach…

11

LOL! I know what you mean. Everything in my house is washable. It has to be with 3 large dogs. Rocky loves his water and is first to the bowl when fresh water is provided. It’s quite dry here, but I think he does get enough water, based on how much he enjoys it. Maybe too much… We’ve had him on a limited ingredient (no grain) dog food for over a year. He likes it, but it doesn’t seem to have impacted the vomiting. One of the vets who has seen him suggested tranquilizers, thinking Rocky was anxious about something. That just made him sleepy, but didn’t settle his stomach. We’ve had the emesis, his urine and stools checked. Nothing unusual. No weight loss. No behavior change before or after the vomiting. I’ve sort of given up on the investigation. Rocky’s a very sweet and loveable boy and seems to be in no distress. So mom just deals with the mess.

12

We have a 13 year old cat who does this. Ultrasound was inconclusive but vet suspects either cancer or acute bowel malabsorbtion, prognosis and treatment both the same at her age. She’s on s couple of meds (think one of them is steroid based) which has cut it down a lot.

13

My first thought was also that it might be food-based. Have you tried different foods? Grain-free?