My Sadie was vomiting profusely for 7 weeks before she was diagnosed as having a Motility Problem. This means she was unable to properly digest her food, and it kept coming back up. A dog should digest their food within 2-3 hours, but sometimes undigested food would sit in her gut for days. Sadie had always been a “puker” and even in healthy years she would vomit undigested kibbles---even hours after she had eaten, but I always thought this was due to hairballs (she chewed her fur). If your dog has this behavior, please mention this to your vet!
Sometimes after surgery or taking a specific medicine a dog will develop an ileus, an intestinal obstruction that prevents the contents of the intestine from proceeding to the lower bowel. We don’t know for sure that Sadie had an ileus, but we know there was some sort of motility problem. She could not properly digest her food. In late February, Reglan was prescribed and it helped. But it did not control Sadie’s vomiting. What’s more, I was still unaware that I could crush pills, so I either had to give her a shot or “pop” a pill (which I was rarely successful with either option). Once I learned I could crush pills, we were able to make sure her dosing was regular and it greatly eased her discomfort. But Reglan still was not the best medicine. Of course, Sadie had so many complications that made her way difficult. That March we took Sadie to her new vet who told us about Cisapride (aka Propulsid). (She was tested for Mega Esophagus but this was not her problem.) Being that it is no longer on the market for human consumption, it has to be mixed at a compounding pharmacy and is rather expensive, but for our baby….the results were well worth it! Cisapride is not for every dog, but it made all the difference with mine! Unfortunately, we had to insert an esophageal feeding tube in Sadie before she went on the Cisapride, so I will never know exactly how it would have helped her under pre-feeding tube circumstances. But she was able to digest her food, and the cisapride greatly helped control episodes of vomiting.
