Tummy Troubles

So I haven’t posted for a while. I would love to say that we have been so busy living life to the full that there’s been no time for the internet, but sadly that has not been the case.  We have predominantly been busy nursing a poorly dog.

Although Jenny and I have settled into our new life very quickly, the change has been a bit tougher on Ralph. Ralph arrived in Muscat at 3 o’clock in the morning a few days after we arrived.  Although he was very excited to see us, we could tell that he just wasn’t his normal happy self. We gave it a couple of days to see if he would settle in but quickly realised that he had to go to the vets. It turns out that Ralph has an immune-deficiency disease. The lovely Natalie at Muscat Vets advised that this is like an infection which can lie dormant for long periods of time and is then brought on by stress. The long flight over is likely to have triggered it, although had we made the very difficult decision to leave him behind this is also likely to have triggered it. So a no win situation. After numerous trips to the vets and several courses of steroids Ralph finally seemed to be on the mend.

We got the all clear on the Monday from the vet, but when I came home from work the day after I found Ralph’s stomach all swollen and knew it was serious. I rushed him to the vet where they x-rayed him and diagnosed him with having a twisted stomach. Firstly, they inserted a tube into his right side to release the pressure. However, this didn’t work and so they had to call the surgeon. We were warned that Ralph was in a very serious condition and that his chances of survival were slim but they would operate and see what they could do. So having sliced him open from chin to bum and some 3 hours later we got a call to say that Ralph was out of surgery and hanging on. Again, we were reminded that whilst he had survived the surgery, a lot of things can change within 24 hours and his chances were 50:50 at best.

Ralph after surgery

Gastric torsion

A twisted stomach or gastric torsion as it is also known can happen to any dog, but it predominantly happens to large, deep chested dogs and is potentially fatal.

German Shepherds are one of the breeds of dogs that are prone to gastric torsion and so we have always tried to be as careful as we can to prevent this from happening. Ralph is always exercised first and then we leave a time gap before he’s allowed to eat. He also gets fed several small meals a day rather than a single large one in the evening. Unfortunately for us, having just kissed goodbye to all our pet insurance (it doesn’t exist in Oman), it’s just one of those things that can happen at any time.

For whatever reason, the stomach twists and gas becomes trapped. This causes a build up of pressure. At the same time the blood supply is restricted to vital organs, which can cause organ failure. 

         

 

This is the x-ray (not Ralph’s – stolen from Wikipedia) of the underside of a dog suffering from gastric torsion. The dark area in the bottom right is the build up of gas.

Once this has happened to a dog, there is a higher chance of it happening again. To prevent this the vets have stapled Ralph’s stomach wall to the inside of his chest.

Fortunately for us Ralph has made an amazing recovery and is going from strength to strength. Once he’s back to normal then there’s just the heat to contend with!