Don't you know anecdotal evidence ALWAYS applies to everyone in EVERY single situation always? lol Good luck!

This same story lands in my inbox every summer it seems. I no more belive it than the man inthemoon story.

It does not surprise me that people who have had dogs who were victims of bloat would clutch at any straw that might indicate how to stave off this horrible problem. I have had two dogs die of bloat and trying to figure out what happened and how I could have prevented it and if it was my fault and if I let my dogs down etc. was a long process that did not make the grieving any easier.

I just read your older article on the topic, and at the time these two Danes bloated, raised feeding bowls were recommended. Other than that, one dog was eating raw, neither of them had been exercised...but it still happpened.

I've received several copies of an e-mail re: Equimax (a very safe dewormer for horses containing both ivermectin and praziquantal) allegedly causing the death of "a healthy young Thoroughbred". From the e-mail: "After giving the horse the wormer it developed severe colic, then a hole was burnt in the horses small intestine. The horse was passing parts of the small intestine in his manure, then blood showed in his urine and his kidneys shut down. Peritonitis set in and the horse didn’t have a chance. He died in 7 days."

Unsubstantiated and illogical. As any small animal veterinarian knows, praziquantal (the alleged culprit) is approved for use in humans as well as pregnant and nursing dogs. But the e-mail lives on because if someone said it on the Internet, it must be true.

Assuming that this email was written by the person whose dog bloated and that they are accurately reporting what the vet said to them, are you angry with the writer for believing their vet? And for sharing that information with friends? This happens in every pet owning community that I know of and it is not usually met with ridicule. The fact that the email went viral is not the fault of the original writer and should not be a factor.

I have been told by a vet that I know and trust, that bloat prone dogs should be given small amounts of tepid water following exercise, not ice cold water. This was following an incident in which gulping very cold water may have been a contributing factor. I have since observed that any time my dog is overheated from exercise or weather and then drinks very cold water, he vomits. Maybe he's more inclined to gulp refreshing cold water and take in extra air than he would if served tepid water (I can't see any difference in the way he drinks) but it's enough reason for me to observe that there is some sort of correlation between an overheated dog, cold water and gastric upset. It's enough for me to play it safe. The truth is that most of what we know about bloat is anecdotal and most of the preventative measures that we take are based on correlation because causation has yet to be proven.

When it comes to overheated dogs and ice cold water, maybe it's the quantity of water, maybe it's the temperature, or maybe it has nothing to do with the water and it's the stress from exercise and heat, or just the dog's genetics, or some combination of all of the above. The truth is that we don't know and I do not think that it's wise to throw the baby out with the bathwater. A lot of people, vets included, have noticed a correlation between cold water, hot dogs and bloat. I think that dismissing it as a possible contributing factor is just as irresponsible as definitively labeling it the sole cause.

Thank-you Dr. Khuly...... (never too old to learn)

i do believe the lady was relaying something that she was told and believed. based on what she had said, any idea what happened to baran? or is her description too vague?
thanks...
also, due to the very hot weather i have been giving my beagles ice in their water or just to play with... no problems...
lmh

Personally, I think there are many myths and very very few truths about bloat except that it can kill a dog very quickly.

In fact, I think there are TONS of myths about veterinary issues, including bloat and mange and rabies that get spread around by well-meaning but uneducated people.

I think this woman wants to believe she's found the ultimate cause for bloat. And she is also putting her complete faith in the vet who thinks (s)he may be onto something. It's just bad science and a circumstantial anecdote.

I had a dog that "partially" bloated several times. (Never a full twist & tubing relieved the air)

I was told the same thing after the first bloat: room temp water, elevate food dish, feed in several divided meals, etc.

These instructions were via the Vet. So if it is a "myth" there are lots of medical trained folks that believe it too.

I give my dogs ice water and ice all the time and it never seems to bother them. I do give them water from a bowl with a small opening so they can not gulp like they would like to and they love chewing on the ice cubes. My big boy (120 lb lab) does eat out of a raised bowl.

Difference is, Cassandra was always RIGHT, and no one would believe her.

This kind of stuff is the opposite.

I disbelieved the story that raisins could kill a dog for years because it always came over as this sort of urban legend.

Ruh roh.

These instructions were via the Vet. So if it is a "myth" there are lots of medical trained folks that believe it too.

Yes indeed. After I lost my beautiful Mastiff Skye to bloat on New Years Eve 2000, our vet gave us a whole host of things that I might have 'done to cause it'.

I wasn't feeding her from a raised dish.
I wasn't using a small size kibble and feeding her multiple meals.
I kept her crated after she ate, when I should have let her walk around.
I gave her cold water, when I should have given her tepid water only.
Raw food can lead to bloat because it makes dogs gassy.

Maybe it's time for a curriculum overhaul on bloat in Vet Schools, and for mandatory re training in it for licensed vets. I spent YEARS believing that I'd personally killed Skye because I hadn't fed her 'properly'.

In the absence of reliable, well sourced information, myths and rumors flourish. Bloat research is ongoing and it would be great if there were an updated, well-written guide that all our vets, shelters, breeders, rescue groups etc. could have available, one that separates fact from fiction. Internet misinformation has been going around for years, but more and more, information that debunks the latest scary email rumor is also at our fingertips via google, snopes.com etc.

This just goes to show how confusing and controversial the whole bloat issue is. There is a serious lack of good information. Most of what we have is based on opinion and anecdotal evidence and many vets have differing opinions.

There was one significant study done at Purdue University a few years back. While they did not pinpoint one specific cause, I believe they did debunk the theory that feeding from raised dishes reduced the risk of bloat. In fact, I think they concluded the opposite, that raised dishes may increase a dog's risk of bloating.

And, based on some scientific reasoning, some anecdotal evidence and some good old fashioned common sense, I believe that feeding raw reduces the risk of bloat (though I know for a fact that it does not eliminate it). I can assure you that feeding raw generally does not cause gas ... though grains and vegetables frequently do!

I do feed smaller meals, twice per day, restrict activity before and after meal time, use common sense to avoid unusually high levels of exertion in very hot weather and I no longer allow him a huge bowl of fresh cold water as soon as we come inside. He gets a small dish of tap or room temperature water immediately and a bit more several minutes later.

I realize that there are no guarantees, I am simply doing the best I can for my dog, based on the information I have, realizing that he has a deep, narrow chest and a history that puts him at risk for GDV.

It is very possible that Skye would have bloated no matter what you did or did not do. No one should have made you feel guilty.

I was really surprised when I read your earlier article and found that raised bowls could actually contribute to bloat instead of preventing it - that might be a good thing to add to a future newsletter because it's apparently a rather widespread belief.

You mentioned that among possible symptoms is the dog having dry heaves. Where does the line between 'normal' dry heaving (my dogs seem to have short bouts of it from time to time - usually 2 or three episodes in a 10 min span - after which they're fine) and the level of dry heaving that should be of concern?

I was also wondering, what kind of bowls help a dog eat slower? One of my dogs clears his bowl in just a few seconds. If it's possible to get him to slow down some, I'd think that would be good. We currently feed them 2 smaller meals per day.

Thanks a lot for helping get good information out there!

thorswitch: I hear you! Our lab mix inhales her food! We should have named her Hoover! Dr's. Foster & Smith has a stainless steel slow feed bowl. I think they're often called brake-fast bowls but are always plastic. I measured for the stainless steel one and it fits perfectly in our dog's raised bowl. It's nicely weighted with rubber bottom if used on floor. I think it's on sale in their new catalog. We used to put hard balls in the bowl to slow her too. Ones you can wash with the bowl. I think they were lacrosse balls?

Dr. Khuly, do you know of any evidence regarding phazyme - that it helps or hinders GDVs? I wasn't taught anything about this in school and only recently heard about it as first-aid. What do you think?

When I had a boxer that was a stray for a few months before landing in the local shelter, I had to help break the inhalation habit. What I did first was spread the kibble out on a dish towel. He had to eat much slower when he was sucking up one at a time. After a couple weeks of that I put his food in a bowl with a can in it - whatever we had handy; corn, soup, etc. He never got to the point where he'd eat leisurely, but I stopped being afraid he'd choke himself to death on it and was able to feed in a regular bowl. Perhaps one of those options would help you.

I was completely in the dark as to whether this ice water bloat thing was valid or not. Thank you, Dr. K, for clearing it up as you always do.

The elevated bowls were something I always found a bit silly. From the beginning of time, dogs have been designed to eat off of the ground or at least ground level. Of course, they have evolved to eat many unhealthy, tasty things while seated on their hind quarters and taking it out of a hand .

Here is a nice summary of the Purdue study re bloat (GDV). Copy and paste the link into you browser:
http://www.moonstruckmeadows.com/_derived/Bloat%20(GDV)%20Study.htm_cmp_afternoon-moonstruck-dog-health010_bnr.gif

Here's the correct link:

http://www.moonstruckmeadows.com/Bloat%20(GDV)%20Study.htm

UGH, talk about being annoyed by urban mythology...

RAISED FEEDING/WATER DISHES DO NOT CAUSE BLOAT

The Perdue study has been discredited on sever points, not because the study was bad, but because the interpretation of the data was bad.

The bloat study took over 1,000 dogs (of different breeds predisposed to bloat) that had never bloated. They gathered information about the dog’s lifestyle, including eating habits, for a baseline. Over the course of the study this allowed them to make correlations between lifestyle habits and bloat. They didn't summarize by listing these correlations as CAUSATIVE, but rather developed a list of potential risk factors.

What they didn't consider is that most of the dogs that have a propensity to bloat are tall and fed from raised dishes purely for comfort. When the majority of your sample is fed a certain way, that does not even show a correlation really, not unless the raised vs. floor feeding was part of the controlled variables, which it was NOT.

As an example, suppose I do a study on the occurrence of cancer near chemical factories, and after reviewing the data I also found that the majority of my cancer patients also regularly attended the same church. I could then show a correlation between that church or religion and the propensity for cancer. Seems kind of ridiculous, doesn’t it? But that’s exactly what the Perdue folks did. Without further study on just the raised dish component, their “finding” is purely conjecture.

http://www.irishwolfhounds-guernsey.com/GDV.pdf

You can read the actual study by copying and pasting the above link into your browser. To Elcy, I'm not sure why you would think it's purely conjecture that raised food dishes are correlated (note that I did not say 'cause')with bloat, but the statistics in this study certainly support the correlation. The likelihood that the results were chance is less than 1/10 of 1%, according to the results in tables 5 and 6. The only other factor that had a stronger correlation was having a first degree relative who bloated. I'd love to see the studies that discredit this one...

Hi Lynne,

I'm honestly not sure which part of my statement you didn't understand. Dogs that are unusually high in stature are normally fed from raised dishes; they are also the breeds that are more prone to bloat. This in no way proves that the raised dishes are related to the bloat episodes.

I would be much more convinced if they had done the study based on controlled populations of raised vs. lowered dishes, using the same breed with all other lifestyle and genetic factors being equal. The Great Dane would be the obvious choice for this study because they have the highest risk factor. Incidentally, they also have the highest ratio of waist to chest depth, and a deeper chest than most breeds.

As I said in my example above, just because your population has a common variable, does not mean that common variable is a catalyst for any other events in the populations' life.

So back to my conclusion, for now the study's "evidence" that raised dishes contribute to bloat are purely conjecture. It should take a lot more evidence than a common observation to provide a scientific theory.

As an emergency vet, there are so many things wrong with this I don't know where to start. First of all, if this owner/breeder truly believed that her dog had a gastric torsion (GDV) which is what most people refer to as bloat, she should have sought medical help immediately. Waiting around and giving an anti-gas medication is wasting valuable time that could mean the difference between life and death for the dog. Second, the only way to distinguish if the stomach is actually twisted and needs surgery is with an x-ray. If the dog had an x-ray that determined that he required immediate surgery, why was he transferred? OK, so he gets transferred and taken to surgery to find that his stomach is in the correct position? Maybe they de-rotated with passing a tube, but the description of this dog could have been an anaphylactic reaction to a bee sting, heat stroke or GDV. Reading this makes my blood boil, but then again, I find as a vet that most breeder/dog show people fancy themselves as lay veterinarians which is dangerous and irresponsible not only to their own dogs, but to those who read their unprofessional opinions on medical issues.

Elcy, the Purdue study was an epidemiological study that had data on nearly 2000 large and giant breed dogs.(dogs that typically have a higher incidence of bloat) The data showed that dogs in this study who ate from raised food dishes had over 2 times greater incidence of bloat than dogs who did not eat from raised food dishes. This is a strong positive correlation. Why on earth would you want to take the chance that it might play a part in your dog bloating?

New evidence for the Theory of the Stork
Thomas Höfer a , Hildegard Przyrembel b and Silvia Verleger

a Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, Berlin,
b Office of the National Breast Feeding Committee at BfR, Berlin, and
c Independent Midwife, Berlin, Germany

Correspondence to Dr Thomas Höfer, Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, Thielallee 88–92, D-14195 Berlin, Germany.
E-mail: thomas.hoefer@bfr.bund.de

Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2004
The intended value (disclaimer): This article is not intended to disprove the value of serious epidemiological investigations. It is an example of how studies based on popular belief and unsubstantiated theory, seconded by low quality references and supported by coincidental statistical association could lead to apparent scientific endorsement. Insofar it is a humorous case study for education in perinatal epidemiology.

Summary

Data from Berlin (Germany) show a significant correlation between the increase in the stork population around the city and the increase in deliveries outside city hospitals (out-of-hospital deliveries). However, there is no correlation between deliveries in hospital buildings (clinical deliveries) and the stork population. The decline in the number of pairs of storks in the German state of Lower Saxony between 1970 and 1985 correlated with the decrease of deliveries in that area. The nearly constant number of deliveries from 1985 to 1995 was associated with an unchanged stork population (no statistical significance). However, the relevance of the stork for the birth rate in that part of Germany remains unclear, because the number of out-of-hospital deliveries in this area is not well documented. A lack of statistical information on out-of-hospital deliveries in general is a severe handicap for further proof for the Theory of the Stork.