MY little Girl Passed out of the blue

Question
Hi,

My Sheperd died over the weekend unexpectically she was only 5yearsold and in very good health ( we thought) she visited the vets every 6months and was on flea and heart worm drops. We think it started this Wednesday but not sure. She started throwing up her undigested food Wednesday. Was fine Thursday and Friday, in fact was very playful both days. Saturday morning we got a call from our dog sitter at 7am that she died and there was blood coming out of her mouth and rear, when I got to her she had been gone for a while and had bright red blood out of her mouth and dark brownish fluid from her rear with a little stool(mostly grass).

The sitter said she took the dogs out of the house friday night around 6pm and played with them for an hour or so in our back yard and then put them back in. I'm very concern we might have done something wrong and want to make sure our other dog is going to be ok.

Answer
Hi,  Did she eat on Thursday or Friday? It sounds like she started to bloat on Wednesday, might have semi-corrected it by throwing up, but if she ate on Thursday or Friday, then it just packed the stomach and she went into a full bloat which will kill them unexpectedly.  If the sitter played with them right after feeding them, that would have made it worse.  Dogs, especially deep chested dogs like shepherds, need a good hour or two after eating before exercising so that the stomach can digest the contents and not bloat.  I am sorry for your loss, but that does sound like what happened.  Hope this helps,

Dawn