Indiana Under the Knife
Last Tuesday after class, K and the dogs were still up, which is pretty unusual. Apparently, Indiana had thrown up his food and was having further stomach problems. We hoped that it would sort itself out and he’d feel better in the morning. By 0330 it was obvious that he wasn’t feeling any better because he had spent the whole night wanting to go outside to either through up or eat grass. We decided to take him to an emergency vet in the morning.
Four X-rays and a consultation later, it was obvious that there was foreign material in his stomach. So we head over to the surgery center. To confirm that the mass was just in his stomach and not in his intestines, he also got an ultrasound. The performed an endoscopy to remove the material from his stomach, but it’s grass. To pull it out via the endoscope would take a long time. We gave our permission over the phone for them to cut him. And then we waited.
Two hours later, they were done and he was still alive. There was a mass of grass the size of three fists in his stomach.
Friday morning, we pick him up and begin the recovery process. But why did he eat so much grass? I think I know why. Our dog food, Canidae, has a new formula. When we got the new bag, both of our dogs had the runs. Not an unusual thing for Ripley, but strange for Indiana. We try the new bag for a few days, decide that the dogs aren’t just getting used to new food and switch to a different brand. Today I was reading one of the blogs that I like and she had a post about Canidae. Lots of people are reporting problems.
My advice, stay away from Canidae. And when your dogs don’t react well to a new food or treet: Stop feeding it to them. So what if you throw away a $40 bag of dog food. It’s cheaper than $4000 worth of surgery and not knowing if you’re going to have to go bury your dog.
