3 yr old boxer throwing up for 1 1/2 weeks

Question
My 3 yr old boxer, "Jake" has been throwing up from anywhere from 2am - 6am (only once a night). The vet told me to give him Prilosec so I did, it worked the first night but he is back to puking again. Does have an appetite and still playful, and the vomit is foamy and white/yellow. Any suggestions? Someone at work suggested feeding him rice, so I'll try that tonight. Thanks for any advice you can give!

Answer
Hi Shayne,

Have you phoned your vet back?  Foamy white/yellow vomit is bile.  There are a couple things that could be causing it.

1.  Inadequate nutrition.  For some reason, dogs will vomit bile (sometimes, not all the time) when they're hungry.  If you're only feeding Jake once a day, you may want to split his meals into two smaller ones and see if that does the trick.

2.  An obstruction.  There's a chance he swallowed a toy, piece of a toy, or a household item when you weren't looking.  It happens commonly.

There could be other things to rule out.  It concerns me that your vet told you to give him Prilosec without at least palpating him or doing an x-ray.  My guess is that perhaps you've not called the vet to tell him it's continuing?  If you've not, please do so.

Rice won't do anything, don't bother.  He's not vomiting his food and his appetite is fine.  And it's not 'rice', it's called an elimination diet, which would be fed for 2 weeks, and consists of rice and boiled chicken.  :)  Bile is not indicative of an upset stomach generally.  Dogs don't get ill in the same manner we do...while we would want to eat bland foods if we had the flu, say, it does nothing for a dog...the flora in their stomach is very different.  An elimination diet is used when the dog cannot handle dog food (too rich) or has allergies to food.

Again, though, my first suggestion would be to inspect all of his toys, look for washcloths, socks, remote controls, eye glasses, headphones, iPods, cell phones...anything small and smelly.  Anything we touch frequently smells wonderful...especially things with buttons (dead skin cells get down the cracks).  Make as sure as you can that things are accounted for and then call the vet!  Let them know the Prilosec (which is for heart burn btw, not vomitting...you'd have been better with pepto) didn't work and see what they say.