January 2011
Kathy Thomas first told us of a second-hand report there was a Samoyed in the Kent shelter. A friend of hers went to check for a lost dog (since found) and saw him, so she wanted to be sure we knew. He had been picked up New Year’s Eve in Enumclaw, and was a senior male. Erin went in right away to make contact and found he was available for adoption on the 5th if his family didn’t come and claim him.
Erin took the day off to help, and at noon she picked him up. It’s traditional that we ask the first person who transports a rescue dog to give him a name, and she chose Baxter. It seemed to fit him. She brought him directly to us because he was a mess and needed grooming. Erin and Kathy worked on him for a couple hours before he went to the vet for a quick appointment. They drew blood and decided to wait a day for x-rays. He had a noticeable problem walking that appeared to be neurological.
That evening Kathy bathed him and he continued to be sweet the whole time. He walked around the house and seemed very comfortable being with us. Some dogs immediately attach to us, and Baxter was one of them.
At bedtime he was still exploring and had developed a little cough, not serious enough for us to think anything of it. He still seemed to like being petted and talked to, so we gave him a big pillow and went off to bed. In the morning we discovered he had passed during the night. We were heartbroken.
We took him to the vet and asked for a necropsy because it was important to us to know what happened. The result was almost immediate: he died of bloat. He hadn’t eaten more than a small handful of food, so bloat was off the radar for us. The dogs we’ve heard of who bloated showed more definite signs, and of course since we didn’t know the dog we didn’t see the signs like we would have with one of our own dogs. The necropsy showed complete torsion (the stomach twisted 180 degrees) so even having a tube on hand wouldn’t have helped. The time of death was not long after bedtime, so it’s unlikely we could have made it to an ER even if we recognized what was happening.
Over the years the SCWS Newsletter has carried several articles or stories of bloat, but still we didn’t catch this one. We feel terrible about losing a dog in our care, and if we can use story this to save another dog then Baxter’s legacy will be positive.
PLEASE, PLEASE take some time to educate yourself about bloat. It happens too often in our breed and we need to keep it in mind any time a dog isn’t acting normally. The newsletter of July, 2003 featured an article about bloat along with a first-person column by Darlene about the bloat of one of her dogs. Rather than copying the full text here, we put it back online so you can read it again:
http://www.samoyedclubwa.org/newsletter_2003-07.htm
Our vet told us two stories; the first was a client who stopped by to make an appointment because his dog wasn’t behaving normally. They recognized the symptoms and told him to get the dog to the ER immediately. He did and surgery successfully saved her. The second story was from another vet whose dog bloated. He was two blocks from his own clinic, but his dog died on the way. Every case is different but all are emergencies.
Here is something you can do TODAY. Find out the location and phone number of the closest emergency vet. Put that number in your cell phone. Make sure you know how to get there in a hurry when every minute counts.