Salukis in Good HealthSalukis in Good Health
Bloat in Salukis: one case history
by Judy Simpson
Not too long after I acquired my first saluki, I was having lunch with the breeder and with a friend who had recently acquired a Scottish Deerhound. During lunch, the friend asked about bloat, having heard it was common in deerhounds, and the breeder told her what it was, and what the general symptoms were (restlessness, unable to settle down, growing discomfort and distress, the bloating of the stomach area, the disappearance of the tuck...) I didn't think any more about the discussion... until...
In June of 1987, I took Katie Marie, our 2 year old saluki bitch, to Lexington, Ky, to the National Specialty. She was entered in the Pyramid Cup. During the preliminary course, she was attacked (twice) by one of the two dogs she was running with. She was badly frightened, and hyper-ventilated, but didn't appear to be seriously hurt. She'd snapped at him and bit her tongue, which bled a little. She finally calmed down and we thought she was ok. She ran well in the final course and finished as 2nd place FCH for the trial. We were quite proud of her.
That night, at 11 pm, I put her leash on and tried to take her out before we went to bed. The two other salukis with us were ready at the door. Katie was, and had been, on the bed all evening, refusing to budge. Now she would not get off the bed and go out. I lifted her off, and carried her out the door and put her down in the grass. She refused to walk. She arched her back and dug in her feet and wouldn't go. I had to carry her back into the room. By now, I'd figured out that something was wrong. Inside the motel room, with good lighting, I examined her. To my shock, I saw that her rib cage, when viewed from above, was rapidly expanding. From the side, it was evident that her tuck had vanished. Yet, there had been no crying, no pacing, no restlessness, nothing but an unwillingness to move! But I knew... I dived for the phone book, found the number of the emergency clinic and got directions. We rushed her into the clinic and they immediately diagnosed her as bloat. They didn't think the stomach had torsed yet, so gave her some Ace to sedate her, and got a stomach tube down her. (The vet said another ten minutes would have made a big difference as she was just beginning to torse.) Katie spent the night in the clinic, and I spent much of it on the phone, explaining what was happening to the breeder and to my family. The people I had traveled with had to go on home the next day, Monday, but Katie couldn't be transported that soon. So it was arranged that they would go on home, leave me there with Katie, and the breeder would drive up and join me and we'd take her home when they said she could go.
The breeder arrived, we collected Katie late in the afternoon, and they felt she was stable enough to transport the next day, Tuesday. They had her on an IV and wanted it continued. She looked in remarkable shape for a dog who had just bloated the day before.
When we reached Knoxville, TN, I informed the breeder that Katie was bloating again. We went screaming off the interstate at high speed and went directly to the vet. teaching hospital there. They admitted her immediately. Standing on the examining table, before the very eyes of this startled vet, Katie began to belch... and we all watched in fascination as she burped up the air? gas? and her ribcage went down and returned to normal. They did an X ray and discovered she had an "enlarged" heart. They did an echo... and weren't sure what to make of it but believed it was a serious heart condition. They handed over the test results and x ray, stated she was stable enough to transport, and we continued on. When we reached Asheville, NC, she sat up, stuck out her tongue, and fell over. I was riding with her in the back of the wagon, and she fell across my lap, semi-conscious. I shrieked, and we again left the interstate at a high rate of speed. In the first parking lot we came to, we got her out. Her gums and tongue were pale. Her heart rate was 35 beats per minute. Getting her onto her feet caused her heart rate to rise and the color to come back into her gums. We found a vet in the phone book and got there before he closed. He didn't have a clue. He'd never seen anything like it. Left alone, her heart rate sank and she began to go into shock. Exercised, or stimulated, it rose. He gave her a stimulant and recommeded we take her back to the vet school at Univ of TN in Knoxville. It was the closest to us at that point. So we did.
Katie spent the next week in the intensive care unit on a heart monitor. They did every test they could think of and found nothing. The bloat had not done any damage, they proved that to their satisfaction. They called in another vet. cardiologist, who did more echos and finally said he hadn't a clue. For such an enlarged heart, it sure did look strong... yet why was the heart rate dropping so? What, by the way, was a normal heart rate for a saluki? They'd never before treated one there. What was too low? What was normal? How big should the heart be?
We dragged her littermate to the vet for tests: xray (Katie's heart was 1/3 larger than her non-coursing sister); EKGs (unusual looking T waves... but hard to tell what Kiz's was, since it's difficult to read an EKG when this terrified cream bitch has a heart rate of 130... the EKG was rather useless.) We took more dogs to the vet and did xrays; we did EKGs; we did heart rates. We discovered that a sleeping rate for our male (27 1/2" tall, 56 lbs) was about 55-66 beats per minute; Katie's normal sleeping rate (23" bitch, about 38 pounds then) was more like 70 (since she always seemed to be on the alert.) Her sister, Kiz, had a slightly lower sleeping rate. We didn't know what was normal for each of them... we had no baseline averages to use. For two weeks, Katie's heart rate dropped to 35 when she slept unless we gave her a stimulant. (which we did do.) Then, late one night, she bloated again. No reason we ever could see... but there it was. Once they start, they often continue to do it. The emergency clinic dealt with it and no damage done, it was caught so quickly... but the warning was there. We heeded it. We did a stomach tie down later that summer and we've never had a problem since.
As for the low heart rate.... the night she bloated again, the heart rate went up to "her normal" ... and it never went down to 35 again... It drove our vet nuts. Why? What made it go down in the first place? What made it go back up? He called Univ of TN, talked to them; he went over the records, every test, every medication. He noticed that she'd been given Ace in the Lexington emergency clinic and he called the company that made it. He managed, after a lot of explaining, to talk to one of their research people who said Ace could suppress the nervous system, specifically the vegal nerve... which was the body's natural pacemaker for the heart... and depress it artificially. It wasn't something that often happened when a dog was sensitive to Ace... but it had been known... when she bloated again, the depression was jolted loose by the adrenline hitting her system. (It was quite technical... this is what I understood from the vet's explanation.) Remedy: don't give her Ace; she's sensitive to it!
Katie has never again had Ace; she does not have a problem with valium as a pre-anesthesic. Nor has she bloated again. Her heart rate has remained stable (she is now 11.) We've done everything we know to do to reduce the possibility of another bloat episode. We feed her two smaller meals a day, instead of one large one. We feed a dog food that immediately falls apart in water, so the dry food doesn't go down and swell in her stomach. We never let her exercise vigorously (or course) after a meal. We never let her run hard in the heat or otherwise overstress herself physically. We stuff Di-gel down her if she gets badly frightened by anything and hyper-ventilates.
Not all dogs show the classic bloat symptoms. She didn't complain; she didn't pace; she didn't appear restless. She grew very lethargic, wasn't willing to move around or go out. The rib cage expands; the tuck disappears. Don't "see how she is in the morning". If it is bloat, there won't be a morning. Time is the biggest enemy you have.
They still don't know what causes it. They don't know what will avoid it. They are divided on whether or not it is gas in the stomach, created by the stomach, or air the dog has swallowed. If they bloat, and survive it, get a stomach tie-down, because the odds are high they'll do it again. All deep chested dogs are prone to it. They have found no genetic link (it doesn't appear to run in lines or families. The larger, deep chested dogs are the most prone to it (the deerhounds, wolfhounds, great danes most of all.) Salukis are not immune. A number of saluki have died from bloat but it does not seem to be inheritable. We found absolutely no history of this in Katie's family, before, or since then.
Your greatest safeguard is to really "know" the size and shape of each of your dogs' rib cage (from above) and the shape of the tuck. When bloat starts, they swell... and you can actually see it, it you know what you are looking for. If you suspect it, don't wait.
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Update: March 26, 1998