brown vomit

[Trish]

I joined this forum in February shortly after adopting an EPI dog.

I can't thank you all enough for the information you provided- my vet is behind the times and not willing to update. Thanks to you, Flurry is stabilized on Enzyme Diane, with B12 and probiotics. Happily, she does not have the scary other problems that many of the dogs here have.

However, every 3 or 4 weeks, she urgently has to go out, usually at 3 AM. Once in the yard she frantically eats grass. She does NOT then throw up the grass, as my other dogs would have after this behavior. She will often drink a lot when she's back in the house.

She may throw up an hour to a couple of hours later. The vomit is brown and somewhat thick like thin chocolate milkshake, but smells like vomit. I can't see any grass or other particles, nor any mucus.

The following day, she will be quiet and will not eat until mid to late afternoon.

Does anyone know what this is? Is it related to EPI? Thanks very much for any suggestions!

[jilbert57]

Sounds like possible acid reflux. Have you tried giving Slippery elm? I might try SE for a couple weeks and see if it helps at all. No burps or excess gas in between times?

Jill

[Eddiespaghetti]

My Eddie boi started doing something like this. We started giving slippery elm, or famotidine if if gets bad. I am not sure exactly what it is, but the slippery elm and famotidine help

[Michaela]

Nikki had similar issues for years. I wrote about it here: https://www.epi4dogs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=7808#p7808

We made several visits to Texas A&M and they never really could find out what was wrong. When it was really bad, she wouldn't eat or drink. I would take her for some SubQ fluids and she would be better within an hour, so weird.

I ended up giving her 1-2 tablespoons of Slippery Elm syrup and within two weeks she was much better. Giving the SE in any other form didn't really make a difference.

https://oregonswildharvest.com/products/slippery-elm-bark-organic-powder

[Olesia711]

ahhh... what you described happened to my Izzy.. and freaked me out..... i was used to SID/SIBO flare-ups... but this one time Izzy vomited brown stuff that looked like diarrhea and stunk really, really bad.... and she got very quiet for a time (i don't remember if it was for a day or more)..............

I took her to the vet and it turned out to be nothing more than SID... just different than what i normally saw as a SID flare up...the vet said probably a different strain of bad bacteria then what typically happens. .... i gave a short course of Tylan (if i remember correctly it was for something like 3 or 5 days only) and Slippery Elm and that took care of it. Never happened again.... but it did freak me out............

[Montgomery]

My Mary used to do this. Not the eating grass bit, because she's a house cat, but the brown vomit. Usually in the wee hours of the morning, right in front of the litter box. 1/4 Pepcid tablet sorted it out. Stomach acid.

[TonyAU]

My dog Bailey had acid reflux for years and could not get to the bottom of it no matter what we tried. He'd run out morning or midnight and vomit up white bile. He'd be licking and gulping air and burping. He was diagnosed with pancreatitis and IBD.

We were giving slippery elm, glutamine, marshmallow, licorice powders although these helped suppress the reflux but not cure the cause.

It wasn't until this forum that Eddie/Jeremy suggested Amoxycillin which we reluctantly did a 21 day course and i believe this is what fixed the acid reflux.

If that was the cause then Bailey may have some serious bad bacteria causing his gut issues. We did note from one biopsy that he helicobactor pyroli.