My 7 year old Rottie has a tendency of eating things she shouldn’t. Usually when she I feeling nauseated she’ll drool and retract her stomach until she eventually vomits up whatever it is she ate or it passes through her gut. We do our best to eliminate these incidences but she’s crafty. 

Yesterday I saw her eating grass and drooling like usual. I think “Oh geez. Here we go again” but instead of her retracting her tummy like usual, her belly was all bloated, firm, and more uncomfortable. I followed her to the back yard when she started retching. Nothing came out…at all. Not water, not grass, nothing. That’s when I started to get very concerned. I’ve been aware of Stomach torsion and that it’s is fatal within hours if not treated immediately. I wasn’t gonna wait and see if she got better. We were going straight to the emergency vet right away.

After an anxious car ride to the vet, we arrive. I called ahead so the staff were ready and waiting for our arrival. They immediately placed catheters in her forearms, abdominal X-rays, EKG, meds, fluids, etc. the doc comes back from the radiology room and confirms that is was Gastric Dilatation Volvulus (stomach torsion). They told us their plan, risks of surgery, possible complications, etc. we consented to the surgery. They did a needle decompression of her stomach to buy us some time while the OR was being prepped. 3 hours later our girl was out of surgery. The surgery was a success. They were able to flip the stomach back over and remove whatever contents in her stomach. Turned out it was a bunch of monkey grass, her dinner, and these small black rubber chunks (we have not idea what it was from), and attached her stomach to her chest wall to prevent this from happening again. Shes been in recovery since last night and is expected to make a full recovery. The vet was very happy I listened to my gut and brought her in because she would not have made it through the night. 

TLDR: listen to your gut. Take your dog to the vet if you think something is wrong. Better to err on the side of caution than waiting to see what happens. 

Listen to your gut! It could save your dogs life.