How to Prevent Gastric Ulcers in Dogs
📝 Summary
Dog gastric ulcers stem from stress, NSAIDs and steroids, excess acid, poor feeding, or disease. Signs are coffee-ground vomit, pain, and black stools. Diagnosis uses blood work, imaging, and endoscopy; treatment targets the cause and reduces acid.
1 What Causes Gastric Ulcers
Stress ulcers: triggered by changes in environment, surgery, or temperature.
Drug side effects: many small-animal drugs can cause ulcers, such as corticosteroids, NSAIDs, and some antibiotics; because they stay in the dog’s system longer they can cause perforation or bleeding, and ibuprofen is especially hazardous for dogs.
Too much acid: it is the acid and pepsin eroding the stomach lining that ultimately produces the ulcer, so excess acid is the main factor.
Poor management: dogs are poor at self-control, may gorge or eat spoiled food, and irregular feeding disrupts gastric secretion.
Other causes: toxic ingestion, inflammatory bowel disease, pancreatitis, and chronic kidney failure can all lead to ulcers.
2 Recognizing the Signs
Vomiting, often with blood that looks like coffee grounds; abdominal pain; weight loss; anxiety, tension, and poor appetite; black, tarry stools; dehydration; and in severe cases shock and lethargy.
3 How Ulcers Are Diagnosed
Clinically, depression, poor appetite, vomiting, abdominal pain, and tarry stools point to a preliminary diagnosis.
Lab work: blood count and chemistry.
Imaging: X-ray can reveal foreign bodies; ultrasound shows thickened gastric wall or mucosal injury; endoscopy gives one of the highest confirmation rates for ulcers.
4 Treatment
Common drugs: antacids made of aluminum, magnesium, or calcium bases (aluminum hydroxide, magnesium oxide or hydroxide, calcium carbonate) neutralize acid and form water and neutral salts, and are generally not absorbed.
Acid secretion blockers include H2-receptor antagonists (cimetidine), muscarinic and gastrin-receptor antagonists, somatostatin and prostaglandin E analogs, and irreversible proton-pump (H+/K+-ATPase) inhibitors.
Treatment targets the underlying cause (NSAIDs, shock, gastric foreign body); for excess acid, cimetidine or another acid reducer is used; if drugs show no improvement after five to six days, or life-threatening bleeding occurs, the ulcer may be surgically removed.
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