Labrador keeps being sick - any experience of this? Please help!

[BroccoliSpears]

Hi all,

My 2-year-old, apparently healthy labrador keeps being sick.

She's not losing her supper or anything like that, just wretching and dribbling bile all over the carpets. It often happens overnight. It happens probably about 3 times a week, sometimes more sometimes less.

She is on good form, full of energy, not off her food and drinking plenty. In other words, I don't think she's ill as such, I think she just has a bit of a sensitive tummy.

It's a fairly long term thing. We have found that anything rich makes her throw up, so we keep her to a strictly healthy doggy diet - no treats or left overs. Although she does hang around the highchair and clean up anything dropped. Plus, well, she's a lab so she eats anything she finds while we're out.

I'm really really fed up with cleaning up dog sick. I've got morning sickness and honestly, this morning when I went down to find the hall carpet covered again I could have cried.

Has anyone got any experience of this? What worked for you? What food did you cut out? Any supplements?

She is currently on winnalot tins and mixer, plus a little complete for breakfast.

[lilymolly]

my lab has a very sensitive tummy,and we feed her only dry food with no flakes in it, We use Dr John Gold which is fab and about £7 for a large bag. If she has anything other than this, she is sick.

However, if this was my dog I would go to the vet. She may have something stuck in her throat, or have a tummy bug.

Better safe than sorry. HTH
It must be a nightmare for you esp with morning sickness.

On a more positive note, once lo comes along I can promise the dog will be its best friend. My dd is now 20 months and lab and her a best friends.

Good luck x

[ggglimpopo]

My much older labrador is a new dog since we completely changed his food - no wheat products (no more bread thieving!) and only poultry based dog foods - makes no diff if we use cheap or expensive, as long as only chicken or turkey dried food mix, no beef.

Have you been to the vet?

[BroccoliSpears]

Hi lilymolly - thanks for your thoughts. I have been thinking that perhaps a dry diet might be a possibility. Will investigate Dr John Gold.

Can ask - was your lab vomiting the food itself if you gave her anything other than DR J G? Or just being a bit sick at various times?

And of course, I should have said, we have taken her to the vets and got her checked out numerous times. Am very skint from the number of times I've been told that "everything's fine". Grr.

You're also quite right about the bond bgetween LO and a lab - my 16 mth old just adores her - dog's name was her first word! It's so cute watching them together.

[BroccoliSpears]

ggglimpopo - was it a case of trial and error, finding the exact combination of foods your dog could and couldn't have?

Yes, I have taken her to the vet. She often gets UTIs as well - I wonder if this could be related? The vet hasn't made any correlation.

The bread does ring a small alarm bell though - dog had a bread roll yesterday... wonder if it's a wheat thing? Hmmm.

[ggglimpopo]

No, he was really unwell and had a rotten coat and was v lethargic and constantly scratching. Took him to a vet who said it was old age and gave us liver and heart tabs and that was that. Changed vets and she said he was crawling in fleas (had treated him with frontline but apparently french fleas are immune!) and that many labs could not digest all the crap they ate and that restricting his diet was the key. I initially bought IAMs or whatever it was, very expensive, but poultry based. When it ran out I just bought Fido poultry and he has been on that ever since. If desp I buy supermarket own poultry food if I cant find the Fido.

I changed flea spot stuff too!

The difference in him is phenomenal.

[wannaBe]

it could be that she's producing too much stomach acid, and that when her tummy is empty, ie overnight, the acid gets too much and she has to be sick. Kind of like doggy heartburn .

Firstly I would ditch the tinned foods as they are much richer than the dried complete ones and switch her on to a complete dried food such as James Wellbeloved which is glutin free and is very good for dogs with sensitive stomachs. I would also try to avoid as much as possible letting her clean up scraps from by the highchair, not only is normal food not overly good for them, but labradors can be notoriously food obsessed and imo that's not a good trate to have.

Secondly I would look at feeding times etc. If she has excess stomach acid then long periods of timebetween meals could make things worse. Is she fed once or twice a day? if only once, I would feed her twice a day at breakfast/tea time, if she's already fed twice then i would move her evening meal back by an hour to see if this makes a difference.

hth

[BroccoliSpears]

I'm so glad I posted this. I know if I take her back to the vets again they will just want to do a whole load of expensive tests and scans, and while obviously I will pay whatever is necessary to get my gorgeous doggy right, I am not loaded and I just feel that looking at her diet would be a sensible first step.

Doggy heartburn is a good thought. She often has a Bonio late last thing at night but not always (dp forgets) - I wonder if the vomiting happens more frequently when she hasn't had her Bonio.

Right. This week's action plan is to get some sensitive tummy dry food and feed 4 x throughout the day. NO highchair scraps. We'll see how that helps.

I really appreciate people taking the time to add their thoughts.

[EmsMum]

Hopefully you've hit on your labs problem, heartburn; the other thing it could be is that dogs do retch up bile if they've swallowed something indigestible. They must have some filtration system down there! My last dog used to do this a lot after swallowing too large a lump of rawhide chew.
Or if he picked up a nut. Thats pretty obvious though because the offending object should come out.

It is pretty vile.. so with our new dog, the moment he starts retching I get him straight into the kitchen or outside. I think he's getting the idea and its a lot easier to deal with than on carpet.

So the other thing to add to 'what works' is training. If she's sicking up overnight, is there any way you can confine her to somewhere with a cleanable floor?