Stomach flipping

[Hookmaster]

What do people know about a dog's stomach flipping? This is just something I've heard about. One of the recommendations to prevent it is to reduce strenuos excercise/activity 1 hour before and 2 hours after eating. I may need to change the feeding schedule during hunting season. I will have to talk to my vet about it.

[LightningBG]

When we're hunting our dogs, we only feed them once a day, in the evening, a while after we're done hunting.

[reinhard1]

stomach flipping is what was the final issue for my male lab. he was old, almost 15 years so that didn't help. when i brought him in the vet told me this was common in large dogs and dont much know beyond that along with the age of the dog. he told me an operation would be around $2500 and there would be no guarentee for success so i put him to sleep. i noticed he was druling heavily and not eating much of anything and became sluggish almost in one day. i had no idea of this and never heard about it until the day i brought him in. good luck.

[nofishfisherman]

I believe the technical term is Torsion and is common in dogs with deep chests like most hunting dogs.

From my understanding the best way to prevent it is to simply limit strenuous activity for awhile after the dog eats. If you are going to be hunting the dog all day the best idea would probably be to feed once in the evening like LightningBG mentioned. They'll be fine skipping the morning feeding but they'll likely scarf the food and water in the evening so you may want to feed in a few small batches to slow them down a little.

[Harmonica Bear]

Also commonly referred to as "Bloat". Evening feeding during hunting is always a good idea, or small meals. I've been lucky my dogs seem to never want to eat on huting trips. Play time at home, hohwever.

I think the important thing is to notice the signs of bloat if your dog or your buddy's dog ever gets it. I beleive things go down hill in hurry.

[Cootz]

I lost my 10 1/2 year old dog to it two summers ago. I very rarely ever had him excersize after eating. He ended up dying in my car on the way to the vet. When I left for work in the morning he was fine, when I got home from work he looked like a dead deer that had been sitting in the ditch for three days. He was in a lot of pain the last few hours of his life.

[LABS4ME]

Everything I have read basically points to it as being unavoidable... it just happens... you may not have changed anything that you normally do and one day it flips.

With that said, I feed my dogs once a day year round, only in the evenings and never before or right after exercise. I try to keep them calm for a bit after they eat and luckily have never experienced it.

Good Luck!

Ken

[Bryce]

Heard similar experiences to Cootz's. Very gruesome and something you don't want to experience. Have not read the canine athlete article below. Several articles have appeared recently that are showing the once per day feeding is absolutely the way to approach canine nutrition. Morning feedings are actually detrimental to performance in the field. Water, water, water during the hunt. Still run into dogs each year on trips that refuse to eat. In every case, it equates to getting the dog out on excursions more than once a year.