Adrenaline rush

There are a number of emergencies that can cause an adrenaline rush in a veterinarian. A hit by car, cat straining to urinate, seizures and a GDV (gastric dilation and volvulus) aka bloat.

A young Golden Retriever, named Harry, wasn't acting like himself. He was fine when he'd been fed around 6am but at 9am he just wasn't himself. He was retching, vomiting and eating grass hastily (98% of dogs eat grass just because they like the taste of it, just ask all four of my dogs).

I was relieved when I felt Harry's abdomen. His stomach was quite large but it wasn't hard like a basketball. His intestines were also pretty gassy feeling. I was also happy the history included vomiting up grass. Classically, GDV dogs try to vomit but nothing can come up. Off we went to take a radiograph.

What I did not want to see was a twisted stomach. If you look closely at this picture you will see the typical look of GDV. It looks like Popeye, the sailor, is flexing his biceps. When this is what you see, you either fly into surgery or perform humane euthanasia. Once the blood supply has been cut off from the twist of the stomach on itself, you have a very limited period of time before the stomach starts to die.

You can imagine how happy I was to see that the stomach was just significantly enlarged. There is another radiograph showing the gas extended right back to the rectum. We put a stomach tube down his throat to remove some of the gas and then admitted him for observation. We needed to make sure that if his stomach started to torse that we deal with it immediately.

He was taken on regular walks (helped to air out the treatment room as his gas was a nasty smell of success)! His folks also came to walk him a few times as well. By the end of the day, he was starting to act like his goofy normal self! The radiograph taken prior to him going home made us all so happy. The stomach was normal in size and only the large colon was gas filled. Yay Harry!!!!