Sarah began vomiting the day after Christmas, 2000. She's a 3 year old Lab who has always had a touchy stomach. Normally, she'd vomit once per week. She was also a voracious grass eater, "grazing like a cow" as my house sitters would say! On December 26, since both Jakie and Sarah vomited for a couple of days, we figured that both of them had picked up a bug.

Jakie stopped after 2 days, however, and Sarah didn't stop. She never had diarrhea, but would either vomit 2 hours after eating or would immediately regurgitate her food.

We took Sarah to our regular vet and tried, in order, feeding canned Canine I/D, Pepto Bismol, Pepcid AC, withholding all food for 24 hours, Metoclopramide (?). By January 9, Sarah had lost 10 pounds and we decided to take her to a specialist.

Sarah was admitted to the hospital, where they tested her stool (twice), ran blood work, did x-rays, and did an ultrasound. They were initially convinced that she had swallowed a sock, but could find no evidence of a foreign body. They concluded that she had one of two things:

Massive food allergies - she had simply become overnight intolerant of most protein sources.
IBD - she was having a flare-up of IBD.

They said that they could either perform one more (very expensive) test that might give them a conclusive diagnosis, or we could treat the food allergy problem with a special diet (Hill's z/d), also giving her anti-inflammatories that were used in IBD to calm down her intestinal tract.

They would halt the IBD treatment after a week but continue feeding the special diet; if the vomiting started again that would be a pretty clear sign of IBD. We went with the second option, and sure enough she immediately started vomiting when we stopped giving her the Prednisone. We all concluded that she most likely had IBD. It took a while to get the weight loss halted - over 6-8 weeks she lost 20 pounds befoore we got her stabilized. She's now around 55 pounds.

Sarah started taking 1 Pred every day. She remained on that for a couple of weeks, and then tapered to 1 every other day. After 2 more weeks, she tapered to 1/2 every other day, and then 1/4 every other day. We are not taking her down to 1/4 every third day, and will continue to taper her until she is off the Pred. She currently eats Eukanuba K/O, since our vet did not want to feed the z/d long term. She loves her food!

The vet has recommended that we not give Sarah any vaccinations while she is on the Pred. She has said that we should give her flea, tick, and heartworm medications, and said that she has no problem with Revolution.

Overall, we seem to have had an easy time of it compared to many others. She immediately responded to both the Pred and the diet, and it stopped her vomiting at once. She also never had diarrhea, for which I am eternally thankful. I thought the vomiting was bad... While I'd like to get her on a less expensive food, I don't want to mess with success right now. We feel very lucky that she has made such a great recovery.