It all started at 2 in the morning (of course!). Kaz, who is a 7 year old Bouvier, wanted to go out. We told him to go settle down (Kaz likes to go out and lie on the deck and then bark to get back in 20 to 30 minutes later).

We should have known. Kaz came back to the middle of the bedroom and vomited his entire dinner we're talking an undigested bucketful of turkey neck and veggies and hamburger (Kaz has been eating a raw diet for 3 years).

I cleaned up but it was obvious that Kaz was feeling really bad. My first thoughts were bloat or an obstruction but the fact that he had vomited and that his stomach didn't feel hard argued against bloat. Obstruction was still a big worry since Kaz does tend to ingest various non-food objects (for example, eating the top out of a baseball-style cap button and all, a couple of days before).

So, took him to the vet the next morning. An x-ray didn't reveal anything obvious but Kaz was still not eating or drinking. He did eat a couple of biscuit-type treats and I took him home hoping that it was just a stomach upset. I left for work and when I got back, Kaz had vomited the biscuits and the water he'd apparently drunk and he was very obviously really sick.

To make a long story a bit shorter, Kaz ended up spending three days at the vets on IV's (for dehydration) and having a barium series done. The barium series didn’t show anything and he was still not eating (he lost 10 pounds in less than a week). So, our choice was exploratory surgery locally or taking him to the Vet School 150 miles away for an ultrasound. We opted for an ultrasound and a friend and I did the drive through fog, rain, and ice… Left Kaz at the Vet School and came home. The ultrasound did not show any obstruction but did indicate thickening of the stomach and intestine along with swollen abdominal lymph nodes. The vets wanted to do an endoscopy to see what was going on and I agreed (at this point, cancer was a real possibility).

Kaz got to come home (another horrendous drive in dangerous weather!) for a few days before going back for the endoscopy. That was a long day… but the endoscopy pinned down the problem… Inflammatory Bowel Disease… a mild case…. and Kaz came home. By this point he was eating again and hadn’t vomited for a week and a half but he was on a lot of medication - Metronidazole(Flagyl), Sucralfate, and Zantac.

It’s been almost a month now since Kaz first got sick. He’s still on the Metronidazole (Flagyl) but has been weaned off the other medications. Since he quit vomiting and never really had diarrhea, we decided not to put him on Prednisone.

Given that the IBD may be due to allergies, I’ve eliminated beef and flax seed oil from Kaz’s diet and have very gradually gotten him back to a more normal pattern. He is still eating three times a day, a mixture of very well-cooked oatmeal, baby food veggies, chicken wings and necks, scrambled eggs, olive oil, and some IVD canned dog food. I have also been giving him probiotics and using Prozyme on his food as well as slippery elm.

Kaz, as you can see from the pictures, is my herding dog and he’s the dog I was counting on to help me handle sheep this summer so I’ve got my fingers crossed that he’ll keep feeling as well as he is right now.