It’s just about time for your dog’s next meal, and you’re measuring out the food when suddenly your dog vomits up a slimy yellow mess. Your dog likely has bilious vomiting syndrome.ย The Meowing Vetย explains the cause of this gastrointestinal condition and how you can help prevent it.
Learn more below… ๐๐คฎ
If your dog, who is otherwise healthy, occasionally vomits up a yellow, foamy or mucous-y liquid, he or she likely has bilious vomiting syndrome. This condition, not typically seen in cats, is relatively common in many dogs. The upchucked liquid gets its yellow hue from bile, which is produced by the liver and stored in the gall bladder until the GI tract needs it to aid in digesting fats from a meal.
Bilious vomiting syndrome typically occurs when your dog has an empty stomach, usually first thing in the morning just before your dogโs breakfast is served (and sometimes later in the evening just prior to dinner). In anticipation of an upcoming meal, bile is refluxed up into the stomach, where it irritates the gastric lining, triggering your pet to vomit. Sometimes, this can induce a secondary gastritis (inflammation of the stomach lining), leading to more chronic and severe vomiting that may require medical treatment by your vet.
Bilious Vomiting: Bile from the gall bladder gives bilious vomit a yellow hue.
Feeding a small mid-day meal or a bedtime snack (without increasing your dogโs overall daily calories) can reduce bilious vomiting. And if you only feed your dog once daily, switch to twice a day (every 12 hours); if your dog is at a healthy weight, he or she should maintaining the same cumulative daily calorie intake.
Administering an oral dose of an antacid at night can also help some dogs, especially those who wake up nauseous and don’t want to eat breakfast. Over-the-counter options include famotidine (Pepcid) or ranitidine (Zantac). Consult with your vet for proper dosage.
In addition to being triggered by an empty stomach, bilious vomiting syndrome may also occur secondarily to a gastrointestinal motility disorder in which the GI tract does not move ingested contents forward at a normal pace. Treatment typically includes a prokinetic medication such as metoclopramide (example; Reglanยฎ) to aid the GI tract in normal forward peristalsis movement, thereby decreasing the chance of bile being refluxed backwards into the stomach. Other underlying causes may include a chronic enteropathy (intestinal disorder).
Because vomiting in pets can be a sign of many other health problems, always consult with your personal vet for a full work-up if your pet has chronic vomiting. Pets may also vomit bile due to other underlying GI or systemic causes of acute or chronic vomiting.
– Maranda Elswick, DVM
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This article originally appeared as a post on The Meowing Vet’s Instagram profile, @themeowingvet (March 28, 2018).
