Over forty years of training, breeding & ownership of GSD's, Dobermans and Rott's last Friday I had my first experience with Bloat. My GSD, Kirby has always been a slow eater sometimes taking hours of a bite here bite there of his raw diet. Kirby is a male 86 lbs. very well excercised twice daily regardless of weather.
Immediately after He turned from His food bowl my wife and I noticed He lloked like He was going to vomit but could not and I thought he was chocking on a bone lodged in His throat, he was having a hard time breathing and tried to hide from me !!! We are extremely lucky that we live 10 minutes from a 24 hour, seven day per week Emergency Hospital which is also our Vet. My wife called ahead and I was met at the hospital by the doctor and staff. He was immediately medicated and tubed for breathing then xrayed. My understanding is that I was able to get Him to the hospital prior to His stomach doing a complete flip. He had his stomach pumped, placed on I/v meds and kept at the Hospital for two days.
He has a extremely sore throat so bad that He cannot bark and it is clear that trying to eat even the softest of chicken and rice that the food hurts him.
Kirby is taking Carafate for the throat discomfort and seems to like the medication as it is in liquid form and must feel good on his throat. He also licks ice cubes.
The Vet asked me to remove Kirby's elevated dish, and place Him on Dry dog food ( wet) with a combination of "cooked" meat and or fish. the Vet was totally against me allowing Kirby to go back to his raw diet ? Also to feed Him small portions three times per day.

My questions are has anybody else been told to remove their K9 from a raw diet, removal of the elevated bowl ?
I guess I'm wondering if anyone else has dealt with the same problem I have.

Lastly: Sore throat cure's / remedies
Thanks,

My raw-fed GSD bloated one year ago. We were not at home when the torsion started (we were at the movies) and we came home to find him. I rushed him to the emergency vet where they did surgery to correct the torsion and also did a gastropexy--tacking his stomach down to prevent another torsion. He was in intensive care for a week, and needed two blood transfusions.

Luckily, he survived, recovered completely and is thriving.

Our vet and I believe that the fact that he was raw fed was a major factor in his survival--he didn't have any carbohydrates in this stomach, so his system made much less gas that if he had been full of kibble.

Out of an abundance of caution, our vet recommended that from now on we give him his diet in ground form--so that's what I do. It's the same raw meat-and-bones diet he always ate, but I put it through a meat grinder. I think the vet is just being overly cautious because of the stomach surgery not to take any risks. Perhaps that might be a compromise your vet would approve of. ?

I never fed from an elevated bowl. And since your dog was lucky enough to get intervention before the stomach flip, your case is somewhat different from mine. But I know how scary it is--and you have my understanding and sympathy. Best of luck on his recovery.

Thanks Tracy

Nico bloated but without torsion several years ago, it was so very scary. I am glad you guys were home to catch it right away!

I was also told to remove the elevated food bowl for my girl and
to make sure she was quiet for an hour after meal times.

As far wetting down dry food, I have read some articles that say wetting dry food that contains citric acid may be a contributing factor for bloat.

Most vets will tell you remove the dog from raw for any reason they can think of.

My only concern would be letting him nibble on raw throughout the day, if his food is sitting at room temp for hours on end it is growing bacteria like crazy.

If you have an ice cream maker you could make the chicken flavored frozen yogurt concoction I made for my dog after surgery. I just put plain yogurt and a couple jars of Chicken baby food in the ice cream maker and let it do its thing.

Thomas,
I have heard that an elevated bowl can contribute to bloat/torsion.
I am sorry I don't have a link for you, but hopefully Connie or someone else will have a link for the reasons why.

Try google and put in elevated bowl and bloat in there and I bet it comes up.

So sorry to hear you are having to go through this, but so happy you caught it in time.
I wish all the best for Kirby, sending healing thoughts your way!

 Quote: joyce salazar

Thomas,
I have heard that an elevated bowl can contribute to bloat/torsion.
I am sorry I don't have a link for you, but hopefully Connie or someone else will have a link for the reasons why.

Try google and put in elevated bowl and bloat in there and I bet it comes up.

So sorry to hear you are having to go through this, but so happy you caught it in time.
I wish all the best for Kirby, sending healing thoughts your way!

The Tufts (Glickman) Bloat Study found correlation between bloat and raised bowl, upsetting years of elevating-the-bowl advice.

Scroll down to "Causes":
http://www.vetinfo.com/elevated-dog-feeder.html

The new Purdue study backs up the advice not to elevate the dish.
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:SB4pkL7fA5EJ:www.crittersitextra.com/pettips/NEW_Purdue_Bloat_Study.pdf+the+bloat+study&hl=en&gl=us&sig=AHIEtbQcWk3bxXKjSOLTPjocKgccY8z5bQ

Quoted from the Purdue website:

"Most of the popular methods currently recommended to prevent GDV did not appear to be effective, and one of these, raising the feed bowl, may actually be detrimental in the breeds studied."

The studies report an increased risks of GDV associated with
1) increasing age
2) having a first-degree relative with GDV
3) having a faster speed of eating
4) dog eating a "large" volume of food per meal--especially one time a day
5) having a raised food bowl
6) consumption of dry foods containing fat among the first four ingredients
7) consumption of dry foods containing citric acid that were also moistened prior to feeding by owners.