re: Dog with the twisted stomach, aka the "smurf hat"

You're welcome. I'm glad it's going well and I hope he has full recovery. I know its tough to give up that kind of dough but you did right by your dog.

If he had to take the spleen out then things were definitely getting serious. There are little vessels that run from the tip of the spleen to the stomach. When the stomach twists, those twist and cut off blood supply. In those cases if you wait even longer part of the stomach wall dies too and you have to cut some of it out - definitely not an easy thing to do and sometimes not fixable at all.

Thanks for great data man.

Yeah the cost is a lot but honestly I thought it was going to be a lot more. I think we will land at about 3300.00.

Here is what's crazy about spleen damage: dog was perfect and active with no issues at 10pm.

At 11pm, suddenly, it was moaning, gruntining, pacing, vomiting, in obvious pain.

We only let this go on until about midnight (for an hour) and saw that something was up and hauled her in.

The real kicker: I knew nothing about this condition! And the ONLY reason we brought her in is because my daughter brought home a milkweed plant for butterflies and I was convinced she ate that plant.

So it's kinda wild that if it wasn't for the milkweed in house, I probably would have just thought dog was constipated. Would have been a bad mistake!

The female was a bull mastiff and about 155 pounds, but she got sick when we had her at a dog kennel while on vacation so did not see the full process, The male was an english mastiff about 175 pounds, and the first time he was sick with bloat, we loaded him up immediately and headed to the emergency vet. They did the surgery immediately, and he was supposed to be isolated and resting for about three weeks once we got him home.

However we also have a two year old german shepherd who is so active, it was hard to keep him away from the playing shepherd. He did well for about 5-6 months and then had bloat again. We caught it in time and got him to the vet and they were able to treat him with meds and other procedures and he was able to recover.

We have a pool in the back yard and the dogs were out playing in the late evening. They had been out for only about an hour or so and my youngest daughter was coming off the sport court and saw that Rosco (the mastiff) was acting funny. We got him out of the pool and could see immediately that he was already in distress from bloat.

We could not get him in the truck and called the emergency vet who told us several things to try. None proved helpful, and within another hour or so he was gone. Really a very sad thing to watch him go through. But he was nine years old, and was pretty well at his age maximum for the breed.

Thanks for your thoughts, he was a great animal, amazing protector for my children and extremely loyal dog. But good Lord, could he fart and fill up a house with the worst smells you could imagine. Guess I will miss even those things!

I know exactly what you mean. Constantly cleaning slobber off the walls. Good times.