Like so many of you, we’ve been dealing with infrequent episodes of what can only be described as “the gulps” in our 4.5 y/o Pembroke Welsh Corgi. The first time our Lilo experienced this awful ordeal, it occurred early in the morning before breakfast, and the severity of her symptoms sent me into a downright panic. I could tell she was beyond confused as well as to what was going on with her body, as if pleading with me to please help her. Believe me, I would have liked nothing more! She appeared to be swallowing/gulping very rapidly, almost in bursts, so my (very frightened) initial thought was that she had something lodged in her throat. I took her to the vet clinic as soon as they opened, but she did not display any symptoms once we were there. She is a highly anxious dog, and absolutely loathes going to the vet under any circumstances. After looking her over, the vet didn’t seem the least bit concerned, and when I tried to describe the symptoms, she looked at me as if I were out of my mind. Nevertheless, she attributed the behavior to allergens, and prescribed an antihistamine. I had a feeling seasonal allergies were not to blame, but seeing as the vet did not believe it to be anything serious (most likely because Lilo was suddently symptom free), I decided to give the antihistamine a try, and we left. Not surprisingly, this did not work, and Lilo’s “gulps” were worse than ever throughout the remainder of the day. I’m sure the stress and anxiety she experienced from our visit to the vet only aggravated things. She would, as most others have described, constantly pace around the room “vacuuming” our carpet and eating any type of debris she could find (dirt, dried up leaves, hair, etc), which she normally doesn’t do. The same applied when she’d be outside on a walk, “mowing the grass” if you will, which again, is very uncommon behavior for her. She became so fixated on this, that she wouldn’t look up when called and had no interest in playing ball, her absolute favorite past time. The next day, after a long night of worry and relatively no sleep, we decided to get a second opinion, and took her to a different veterinary clinic. This time around, the vet seemed much more thorough and concerned, regardless of the fact that again, Lilo wasn’t displaying any symptoms. She diagnosed it as acid reflux, and prescribed a medication equivalent to Pepto Bismol, which we were to add to Lilo’s food through a syringe. The next day, her symptoms cleared, and we were ecstatic!
Fast forward 8 months, and the “gulps” began again around this past December. They have been reoccurring off and on since then – sometimes once a week, or once every two weeks lasting 24-48 hours. The multiple vets we’ve seen have not seen a reason to conduct tests at this point, so we decided to take some other steps at home to see if we couldn’t pinpoint the underlying cause. Before today’s episode, Lilo was eating Blue Buffalo Life Protection, so we switched her to the grain-free, higher protein BB Wilderness version as an experiment to see if it’d help. We were overjoyed to have gone almost 2 months without an episode, and thought for sure that it must have just been a grain allergy that she’d suddenly developed for some reason. Unfortunately, I’ve jinxed our luck because today, we’re experiencing another horrible episode of the “gulps.” It seems that we still haven’t quite figured things out, and as I’m sure all you fellow dog lovers can attest to, it’s so so painful to watch her experience this. I try to comfort her as best I can, and not to let her pick up on how upset this makes me, but it’s always difficult because I care about her, and just want her to enjoy life and be comfortable, not panicked and miserable. Especially not so often…
Thank you all so much for the advice you’ve provided on this forum. We are considering taking a few of these ideas to our vet, and if absolutely possible, perhaps performing an endoscopy (with biopsies, as suggested above). We simply don’t want her to go through this anymore, and if it’s preventable/treatable, we want to do everything we can. I have not tried Gas-X or Pepcid complete, as I’m always a little hesitant to administer drugs that are not intended for dogs. But I’ve now heard from several sources (vets included) that it’s fine, and it seems many of you have had some success with them, so I will consider trying one of those OTC remedies before resorting to costly and invasive tests. If anything changes, I will certainly keep everyone posted!
