I want to start by telling you a story. Close your eyes and picture the perfect day - nice fluffy white clouds in a big blue sky, a lake, a beautiful beach, your closest friends and your trusty sidekick - your dog.
This was the scene before me. We arrived at the beach and spent a fun couple of hours laughing with friends and throwing the ball into the water for Tori, our 1 year old GSD. It was her first time to this lake and she loved it. Running, splashing in the waves and chasing after her ball. Approximately two hours later we started packing up to head home. Everything was about to take a drastic turn.
Tori started to vomit large amounts of water. We thought “oh she just drank to much” and kept an eye on her as we packed up. On the walk back to our car she began to stumble, rapidly losing coordination. She ended up collapsing and my husband, Landon, had to carry her to the car. We quickly left rushing to the nearest 24 hr emergency vet - an hour away. I sat with her in the backseat and called ahead to let the vet know we were coming and that I didn’t know what was wrong. Tori was lethargic, but conscious, and drooling profusely. She ended up completely soaking me, and the blanket she was laying on. When we arrived at the vet, she was able to walk in on her own and was somewhat more alert. They put her on an IV, ran some blood work and told us they would get back to us in the morning. Tori ended up spending the night at the clinic. We were called in the morning and told it could be a few possible things such as over exercising, heat stroke, or something she ate at the lake and to come and pick her up. We were concerned that we didn’t know the exact cause of what did this to our poor pup. We vowed to make sure to took more breaks next time at the lake and that we would be more aware of her trying to eat anything she shouldn’t. A few months later I read an article about water intoxication and went - oh wow that sounds so much like what we dealt with. The dog in the article was not as lucky as Tori and did not make it but shared many of the same symptoms.
Flash forward almost a year to the day and we were at the lake again with Tori, our male GSD Baron, and my mom’s dog Buddy. We arrived around noon and enjoyed our time. We made sure to be careful to make Tori take lots of breaks, go for swims to keep her cool and that she had plenty of fresh water to help keep her from needing to drink the lake water. Suddenly, she was throwing up again. Lots of water and froth. We packed up and headed for the car. She wasn’t acting lethargic and her coordination wasn’t to bad so we figured we would treat it as heat stroke and get her home to rest. We loaded the dogs in the back of the car and drove home. When we got home I looked into the back seat where I thought the dogs were resting. Tori had begun to drool again which I knew was NOT good but more than that, I saw her eyes roll back into her head and she lost consciousness. We jumped back into the car and rushed for our local vet, arriving in what I suspect to be record time. Landon carried our unconscious dog into the vet. She was quickly put on an IV as I explained the situation to our vet and reminded her that this had happened before. I spent three hours laying on the floor of the vet clinic praying that our girl would wake up and be okay. We got lucky. She pulled through yet again.
In hindsight, looking at how she was acting, there was visible signs. In the vehicle she had began to act very tired, which for this dog is almost unheard of, her drooling was out of control and her eyes were glassey. They symptoms of Water Intoxication are loss of coordination, lethargy, bloating, vomiting, glazed eyes, excessive salivation, difficulty breathing, seizures, and coma. I recommend if you are experiencing any mix of the following you seek vet attention. One of the things we have noticed in taking Tori back to the beach for short amounts of time is that she is constantly intaking water, be it when retrieving a ball/stick from the water, running along the shoreline licking and chasing waves or simply standing in the water she is trying to constantly drink. We have become hypervigilant in not allowing this type of behaviour to try and cut back the amount of water she gets. Things you can to help prevent against this is limit activity in water, limit water intake (throw a stick or frisbee vs a ball as it allows them to close their mouth more and not swallow as much water), don’t lick at waves, and take periodic breaks. I never knew this was even a risk I needed to worry about. I hope in sharing my story it can help other pet owners to take precautions against it ever happening to them.
RSS Feed
