Hi. I'm new to these forums. I have an 11 month old male golden. He was fed kibble - Nature's Variety Venison, and I decided to try raw. I've researched it a lot and started with chicken. I should add that he has had what the vet calls, morning vomit for the last several months. He would wake up around 5am most mornings and vomit bile. He was xrayed and tested to make sure nothing else was wrong and then put on Pepcid AC at bedtime along with a little snack so his stomach isn't empty. He never wakes up vomiting if I do this. When I switched him to raw I gave him chicken only - using only legs and thighs at first, then some backs and necks. After about 5 days he started waking up at 5am and vomiting the smaller bones in the backs and necks. Now I'm afraid to feed raw since it didn't seem like he was digesting the bones. Any opinions? He's also a gulper and I've had to hold the pieces so he'd actually bite off and chew things or else he'll just swallow big pieces.

Thanks for any help you might have.
Lori Hall

Just a couple of clarifying questions:

Have you given probiotics?

The morning vomiting: he already had it on the previous food, but it was bile only, and now it's bile with some bone? Or other matter too?

He didn't vomit any bone with legs, but did with backs?

P.S. Welcome to the forum!

Hello,

Soon after I switched to raw my dog developed a case of the same thing. 4 am barf bile. Couple of months in a row. Sucked. I had some success with feeding extra meals as you have said you are doing. If I was late feeding him he would barf bile. I never gave antacid.

One of the things suggested to me was that the dog was anticipating being fed and would start producing digestive juices, and then barf them up if no food entered his stomach. It did seem to be true that if I fed him at 4 am he would not barf cause his stomach was full.

Rest assured I had no intentions of letting the dog get me up to feed him every morning at 3:45am

I tried cutting down on fat (removing fat from chicken) keeping the diet very simple in case it was related to pancreitus.

I am not kidding about this next part- I fed up and on the reccomendation of a breeder (not mine) I travelled a long way to a vet that was also very well trained as a homeopath. She took quite a while figuring out a remedy for him. I gave him the remedy as directed and he was cured. No more barfing at 4am

So either the problem resoved itself all of a sudden, or the homeopathic vet cured him. Either way I never gave up on raw and his digestion has been bomber for well over a year now.

Don't give up. Maybe Connie will be more help. Just wanted to let you know I have been there.

Connie,
No, he's not on probiotics.
Yes, he was throwing up just bile before the raw. I gave him only legs and thighs for 5 days or so and no throwing up occurred, then I added backs and necks and that's when the throwing up started. He was on the Pepcid the whole time. (do you have any issues with the Pepcid?)

Also, Connie, should I be worrying about him swallowing, for instance, a piece as big as a chicken leg whole? or do you need to keep teaching him to slow down and crunch it up? (I should say here that the only way I can afford to do this raw thing is if I buy the legs and thighs already cut apart not in whole hind quarters at our warehouse store - they are good quality Foster Farms, but only .99 lb, so I can't feed him whole big pieces).

Sorry this is so long!
Lori Hall

Welcome Lori!

Curious that he would only start to throw up when he was fed necks and backs - which are bony, but made up of so many smallish individual bones... My dog too has had periods of the early morning barf attack, though I came to realize that it was the knuckle or joint ends of particularly large drumsticks that ended up re-appearing on the bedroom floor... essentially the largest, thickest bits of bone weren't being digested fully. Turkey leg bones were the worst offenders and I don't feed them anymore.

Hope Connie can chime in here, because I can only give my experience, and it sounds like your situation is a bit different, maybe more of a long term problem. But I will say, I started feeding raw with pre-cut leg parts, drumsticks and wings - all things that could conceivably be swallowed whole by a big dog (which I have). My dog is a gulper but he would crack each bone at least in half before swallowing - they DO chew a LITTLE bit . You should be OK feeding him the items you mentioned...

Are you feeding any other ingredients with the raw chicken, like pure muscle meat, veggies, yogurt, etc.? Maybe you tipped the scales too heavily towards bone in the bone to muscle meat ratio... Your boy, who has what sounds like a pretty sensitive tummy, might need more mush in there to help digest the extra rmbs? Just thinking out loud here...

~Natalya

Lori,

You can add in plain live cultured yogurt as a probiotic. That is what I use. I give about a 1/4 cup with each AM meal.
I noticed that when I fed my Bloodhound more meat/bone he started to throw it up so I went back to a meat meal and a veggie glop/ground meat meal or THK meal and this took care of it. I almost think he was getting too much meat/bone.

My Dutch will get the morning vomiting if I do not change his meat type regularly. So he gets a variety of chicken, turkey and rabbit more often than I change the others.

My Mal is a gulper also so I grind her meat, bone and all or I break it up with a hammer or cut it up with kitchen scissors. It takes a bit of extra time, but that is why I block out one day a month to package, grind, process and rotate my dog food. Then I do not have to worry about it until the next month.