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Jeff here on cut Life Radio. I am your host's
the next half hour, doctor Jeff Werber. And normally I'm
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We are here for you. Actually we are here to
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How easy is that, free information, free product. It can't
beat it. So over the last couple of weeks, we've
been talking about skin problems and we were talking about
how weird it is that dogs and cats that have allergies,
even inhale the allergies and it's like we have hay fever,
don't necessarily have respiratory signs like we do. They don't
get that scratchy throat, they don't sneeze, they don't get
their runny nose. What they do is they scratch, and
a lot of scratching and a lot of skin problems,
a lot of secondary infection. So what we need to
do is help them. And one of the things I
brought up when we were talking about food allergies, and interestingly,
even with food allergies, are dogs and cats scratch, they
get sores, they lose hair, they get scabs, they are
just so uncomfortable. Here's how to help some of the issues.
And what we're going to do is we're going to
talk about some of the problems that we see when
we have our pets that are presenting with, say vomiting.
So let's talk about for the first time, let's talk
about vomiting at a problem. And the question is when
should you worry? When is vomiting a major concern? When
is vomiting not such a bad concern? And what can
we do? How do we tell having a problem or
not having a problem. So here's some guidelines. The first
thing I like to do when I hear that pet
is having any kind of gastro intestinal upset, is I
like to and I'll ask the owner I'll see for myself,
is how does this pet look? Is this pet look
like he's sick? Because if he's not looking like he's sick,
then I'm probably not going to worry that much. I'll
squat on to know how frequently is the pet vomiting
and what's coming up? Is it just flynn, is it
bio or is it food? And if it's food, how
soon after eating is the pet vomiting. Is it happening immediately,
is it happening several hours later? So these are all
the question of me asked. I'm also going to want
to know if your pet vomits, does he go right
back to his food and ready to eat some more.
That's also very important. Obviously, a dog or cat who's
just ready to run back to the food boat and
eat again, obviously, isn't that sick? Because if they were,
they'd be really feeling lousy and they'll see it, we
would see it, and just how they behave after or
during the vomiting episode. So the first question I'm gonna
ask is what brought on the vomiting? Did it come
on sort of like an insidious slow onset, or did
it happen immediately after or soon after they got into
something that you know they shouldn't have gotten into. I mean,
you know, a dog goes out and eats grass for
whatever reason. And it's a good question because we always ask,
you know, people always asking, and I even want to know.
Do dogs eat grass because they know it's going to
make them vomit? Do they eat grass because they like it?
It's soothing? It's sweet, it's moist, not realizing that twenty
minutes to a half hour later it might make them vomit.
So here's sort of my guideline. And believe me, nobody
really knows the answer to this, but the thought is
that there is a way to get a dog to
not eat something. We call it a version therapy. What
do we do? We put something in that which they
are eating to make them vomit immediately. Dogs don't really
love to vomit. So what will happen is if they
eat something that makes them vomit immediately, most likely they
will avoid that product again. So they become a verse.
They become and it's got an avoidance therapy. So we
develop an aversion to that product, that active ingredient, that food,
whatever it is they're eating, to want them to keep
them away from it. If, however, the vomiting episode happens
long after twenty minutes half hour after the ingestion, if
they liked that which they ate, they will go after
it again even though it made some vomit. But it
makes some vomit, they don't. They don't make the connection anymore.
It happened too long ago, and I think that's what
it is with grass. I think most dogs eat grass
don't vomit immediately. It's a delayed episode. But they like
the taste, they like the sweetness, they like the moisture.
It may even soothe their stomach initially, so they go
after it again and again. What they don't realize is that, yep,
twenty minutes thirty minutes later, they're going to vomit, and
therefore they will keep going after it. And I see
some dogs, even my own sometimes that will just literally
run when it gets outside. For whatever reason, they run
after the grass and they start munching it as fast
as they can. So that's one issue that can cause vomiting.
Certainly getting a hold of overreading what they call e
gorging themselves, that can cause vomiting. Eating something bad, eating
something that's an irritant to gastric irritant can cause vomiting.
But so those are the direct causes of vomiting, and
I am less concerned about those than I am the
vomiting that's coming from some other organ dysfunction. Now, usually
when we have a dog in liver failure or de
liver disease, if we have a dog with kidney disease
or kidney failure, they most likely will vomit because as
those enzymes elevate, we are going to see one of
the side effects, if you will, is going to be vomiting.
So now we have a metabolic source of vomiting. It's
not just because they eat something that they weren't supposed
to eat. The episodes you're coming from the fact that
they are in fact being poisoned, if you will, buy
the build up of byproducts of enzymes because of the
organ dysfunction. So these are the dogs that are the
vomiting episodes. Or first of all, they sometimes come on insidiously.
You can't necessarily link it to that which they may
or may not have eaten, because there's nothing in the
history that would help you. And more importantly, they usually
don't And if you really think about, they haven't been
feeling good. They have not been feeling up to par.
So these are the dogs that are totally may not
even want to eat. So you say to yourself, wait
a second, the dog's not eating, how are they vomiting?
What are they vomiting? Their vomiting bile, the vomiting phlam.
If you in a case of a dog that maybe
ate something too fatty and has what's called pancreatitis. Pancreatitis
is an inflamed pancreas by definition that usually happens when
they eat really high fatty foods, and once that pancreas
becomes inflamed, they are very inclined to continue to vomit.
And the problem is these dogs are usually again you
never say never, you never say always, but these dogs
are usually really sick. Their abdomens are very tender to
the touch, so you're better. An erring will want to
absolutely see the dog, and if they feel the belly,
they actually palpate the abdomen, they'll see and they'll realize
a very tense, painful, tender abdomen. So this too can
be a problem. And these are the dogs that definitely
are going to require some sort of follow up, some
sort of laboratory work, some sort of diagnostics to try
to evaluate why is this dog vomiting. Likewise, if a
dog who has a tender abdomen may be somewhat of
a bloated appearance to the belly and is vomiting soon
after well not soon aftering, you use them when they
vomit immediately and they don't even go through the heaving episodes,
what we call the upchucking. They are mostly regurgitating. When
I see that with regularity, I'm going to think about
something that might be launched in the esophagus, which is
the tube that coming from the mouth into the stomach,
and that's called regurgitation. We don't have that heaving first.
It's just almost like it's like it's instant. They eat something,
they open their mouth, and out of that's regurgitation. That
usually means some sort of problem up in the store
we called the cardiac portion of the stomach. I had
one of these cases years ago when one of those
cheol of bones got lodged into the esophagus and this
dog actually had you could see it on the X ray.
Nothing can get past this thing. We had to go
in and we couldn't even remove the bone fragment, the
piece of bone that was stuck. So we ended up
having to do is push it into the stomach and
then we had to do surgery to get it out
of the stomach. Esophageal surgery is something you do not
ever want to try. You can lead to aesophageal constriction
and it could be something that's much much more dangerous,
where a stomach surgery is something that's much easier on
the pet. But when you have this dog that is
going to vomit several hours or even within an hour later,
now you have to think of the same thing. There
may be a blockage somewhere, but that blockage may be
lowered down in the gi tracked somewhere in the intestine.
It's used even out of the stommach. So whatever it
was successfully got it to the stomach, successfully started passing
through the intestine, but then lodge somewhere else. In some
areas where the intestine gets very thin, one is called
the ilio scout colic junction. So a lot of products
can get up to that point and then all of
a sudden get lodged after that point, And that too
presents a problem because then the question is diagnostically, where
do we go from here? But of course that is
something that you may need to see your veterinary and
once we get into the diagnosis, if we will, then
we can talk about the different possibilities of how to
help these things. So before we go on our break,
just to recap quickly, the important things are to determine
how your dog is acting or your cat is acting.
And let's talk cats for a second, because cats vomit frequently,
and they often can vomit hairballs. But what's interesting about
a cat, and this is what people don't realize because
they'll call me, cat's acting fine, but it's vomiting. But
what's coming up is just some phlegm. I might bring
up the point of hairball and they no, no, no, can't
be hairballs because there was no I didn't see the hairball.
And to that, I say this that in a cat
vomits hairballs, if you're lucky, and if the hairball was
in the stomach itself, then yes, that clump will come up,
but it looks kind of tubular, and that's because it
has to go back from the stomach into the esophagus,
and the esophagus sort of brings it up then causes
a tube effect. But the key is that it doesn't
necessarily have to have the appearance of a tube, and
it doesn't even have to have a hair in it
to be caused by hairballs. And I'll explain why in
just a few minutes when we get back from our break.
Once again, you're listening to doctor Jeff Werber here at
ASSVTS with doctor Jeff here on pet Life Radio. And
when we come back, I want to hear from you.
Give me a call it eight seven seven three eight
five eight eight eight two or log on to us
online at pet Life Radio. Click on ASVATS with doctor
Jeff and let's see if we can help you with
some of your questions about your pets. Lovely subject for vomiting.
We'll be right back. We'll be right back right after
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Speaker 7: Com and welcome back. You are here live.
Speaker 2: We at doctor Jeff Berber here on pet Life Radio.
We asked the vets, Doctor Jeff, and I'm broadcasting live
from New York. I am on the Eastern time zone
from noon to twelve thirty, and of course if you
are in the West, it's nine to nine thirty and
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So before the break, we were talking about the lovely
subject because I mentioned a vomiting and when to worry.
When is vomiting something you can sit and wait on
for a couple of days. When is vomiting something that
you need to have a mediate attention. And before the break,
we were just touching on the subject of hair balls
and cats and why is it that oftentimes a cat
can have hairball vomiting and you won't see hairball. And
here's the reason for that. When the actual clump of
the hair is in the stomach and the cat vomits,
most likely that crop of hair will come up. Think
of you as a sink with you know, the drain
going below the sink in that sort of s curve.
Once the play that is causing the sink to fill
up makes it out of the sink itself, oftentimes it's
sitting right on that drain. It hasn't made it through yet,
so as the drain fills up whatever it was, it's
still in the sink. So if that sink overflows, the
possibility is that this is going to overflow as well.
Whereas what happens though when that plug makes it out
of the actual sink and now it's somewhere in the
piping below the sink is still filling up, it's still plugged,
but when it empties and starts to overflow, the cause
of the block it is no longer there. It's already
somewhere under the sink or under the house. Even so,
that's really basically what happens with hairballs. It is something
that once that hairball gets out of the stomach, it's
still going to cause the vomiting. It's still something we
need to treat. But you won't see the hairball come up.
How do you even know when it comes to a cat,
the same criteria. Cats that vomit hair balls, first of all,
usually once they relieve themselves of that hairball, they're gonna
go straight to their food. They want to eat some more.
They don't seem to be affected one bit from the
hairball itself. So in that way, there's really little to
worry about. And of course he'll prevent them very simple
frequent brushing, a hair bol remedy, a hair bol food,
or a hair ball treat. I mean, there's so many
ways now to deliver air ball remedy for your cat
thinks they love and something that should be done anyway,
And don't kid yourself into thinking that if I have
a short hair cat, I don't need a hairball remedy.
That's the only cat that can avoid having hairball remedy
would probably be the stings, maybe some of the rexes,
because rexes don't shed often, but mostly if you have
a cat, they groom themselves like crazy. And interestingly, the
more allergies they have, the more likely they're going to
groom themselves. The more hair they're going to ingest, the
greater the likelihood of having a hair ball. So that's
a no brainer. Just do it because it's the smart
thing to do. So back to the dog. So if
you have the dog, or i'd say the cat as well,
if they seem to vomit, but they're acting totally fine,
they are happy, they're running, they'll eat if you offer
them more food. A couple of things to think about.
Number one, don't give them more food right away, because,
for whatever reason they vomited in the first place, that
stomach now is irritated. It's kind of like taking a
sack and ringing it out. It's just sore, it's irritated,
it's inflamed. So anything you put into that inflamed sack
is potentially going to come up again. So even something
is benign is water. I can't tell you how many
times that I get a client their pet is vomiting
and they run to the water bowl and they gulp
up water and they vomit again, and the owner feel
sorry because I'm like God, they're going to get dehigrated.
So what do I do? They give it more water,
and they drink that water and they vomit again. Which
you don't want to do is put anything into a
stomach that has or has been vomiting. So what do
you do when the dog is acting fine? And it's
a great sign, by the way, and I tell clientsts
all the time, the fact that they want to drink
water is fantastic. The fact that they want to eat
is great, But don't let them. So what to do
is this. You will give them maybe a couple of
ice cubes in their water bowl, so as the ice
cubes melt, if they want to get a little bit
of water, they can. Plus the cold water is kind
of soothing. But they can't gulp a lot at once
because we don't want them to. We want the stomach
to rest. When we have a pure gastritis from some
sort of irritant because something they ate. The last thing
we want to do is to have that stomach continue
the vomiting cycle. So we give them just some ice
scoops at first, let them suck on that. Twelve hours
later or so they've gone to the rest of the day,
they're acting fine, they're not vomiting anymore. Maybe that evening
you'll give them a quarter to a third of their
regular meal if they eat that and keep that down,
and a few hours later you give them a little
bit more. But you don't have to feel guilty. They
can go easily a full day twenty four hours without eating,
and we're not even to ask you to do that.
We're just asking you to go maybe twelve to fifteen hours,
and when they do eat, give them a much smaller amount.
If they continually are holding that small amount down, then
by the next day you probably can go for it
and give them the regular meal. But you want to
watch them carefully, and of course you want to watch
what they may orman out to be. Now, if you
have a dog that continues to vomit but still is
acting okay, this is where I ask you to search
around your house and I'll ask do you have the
kind of dog that will just pick things up and
eat them. You have kids around the house that maybe
you know, are you missing a sow, a pair of
bontor ware. I'm been telling you what comes out of
these dogs sometimes blows my mind. I can't tell you
how many dogs love to go through hampers, so don't
ask they do it. And I can't tell how many
times I've pulled things like that out of a dog's intestine.
So what happens is they're still feeling good because the
stuff gets it starts passing through, but then all of
a sudden, it hits that spot where it just lodges.
And the problem is when we talk about the diagnostics
that a lot of these things won't show up on
an extrack. Now they eat something that's metallic. I had
a dog ones that actually like to eat medallions and coins.
They were small enough to pass. That wasn't the problem.
The problem was there's something called copper toxicity. They can
get some lead toxicity. So what happens is they start
getting sick from say the copper, which it gets an anemia.
They start getting lethargic, their gums look pale, and you
take the and sure enough you see something there and
mom will saying, oh, yeah, I know that. You know
what I've seen him, you know, swallow a coin before
or he ate his dog tad. So you know, we'll
never figure out why they do what they do, why
they eat what they eat. So obviously that was a
surgical disease. So to make the diagnosis, I mean, the
first thought is X ray because if you have something
that's very dense, or even something that's not dense by itself,
but when it's clumped up you might see it. Then
you could see something on an X ray or an ultrasound.
Then then you know, kind of depending on where it is,
what the options are. Now with ultrasound we can sort
of do a lot more than we used to as
far as diagnostically when we don't know what's going on,
but we assume a blockage. We can sometimes assume a
blockage because there's a certain pattern we call it a
gas pattern on X ray that usually indicates it somewhere
along the line everything somebody to do a dead stop.
And when that happens, then too we have to work
to relieve that. We can do a dye study. It's
we call it a barium study, and with barium, what
we do is we have to beingest a dye that
shows up on X ray. We kind of watch it
follow through the intestinal track until it all of a
sudden comes to a dead stop. And at that point
you can clearly see, uh oh, something's there. Now. If
we're lucky and something's in the stomach, it can be
retrieved via a scope. And sometimes we're not so lucky,
and if it has to go in your dog, your veterinarian,
we'll have to go in surgically to remove it. If
we have a thing pancreatitis, so let's assume that that's
assuming we have a blockage or something physical it's causing
the vomit. When, as an ntored earlier, the source of
vomiting is meta power. It's because of kidney diseases, it's
a liver disease, it's because of pancreatitis. Of course, then
the treatment plant is totally different. This often requires hospitalization diagnostics,
of course, and that is maybe via blood test, ultrasound,
and or X rays. Sometimes we have to show what
it's not just as easily as we have to show
what it is. So a full battery test is often
in order, especially if the dog is adr and doing right,
is acting lethartic, is acting sick, and then so we
go ahead and do our diagnostics and go from there.
These animals are going to be hospitalized, These animals are
going to need IV fluids, and we have to try
to treat the least the underlying disease. So as you
can see, vomiting can range anywhere from a simple thing
that you can call your veterinarian, get the right questions answered,
something you can give it a few days, treat at home,
and your best gauge is just how your pet is acting,
ranging all the way to something where there's a clear
history of having ingested something which is going to require
most likely some sort of intervention, whether it's going to
be through an endoscopy or surgery, or there is seems
to be nothing they got a hold of, but they're
really acting sick, they're tender abdomen, they're painful, in which
case we're looking at complete diagnostic workup and hospitalization to
treat the underlying disease. So love to hear from you
or at a time. A half hour goes fast. So
once again, if you have more you'd like to ask
about the subject, go ahead and reach me on my
email at DRGF at petlife Radio dot com and or
next week we're going to talk about lifting again. Their
range is from a simple lift that came on suddenly,
nothing to worry about giving a few days to possibly
needing some sort of a traumatic intervention, surgery, limb amputation
and you name it depending on the cause. So we're
going to talk about that. So get ready. If you
think you up a question you want to talk about
your pets lifting, be ready next week to give us
a call at eight seven seven three eight five eight
eight A two or this week ahead and send me
an email to doctor Deef pet Life Radio. I want
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