7 things about dog hairballs including tips on how to prevent them.

Following my doggy hairball "misadventure" we've been doing a bit of research about them, like you do, here's what we found out:

1. Hairballs are also known as Tricholiths ~ defined as "A calcified intestinal bezoar that contains hair" by The Free Dictionary 

or 

a Trichobezoar ~ "a bezoar (a mass trapped in the gastrointestinal system) formed from the ingestion of hair." Wikipedia 

2. Hairballs are formed by ingested hair that does not pass smoothly through the digestive tract to be eliminated.

3. Dogs get hairballs when they ingest large amounts of hair due to excessive licking or eating prey.

4. Hairballs can get stuck in the dog's esophagus, stomach or small intestine. 

5. Symptoms of your dog having a hairball problem include:   gagging, vomiting, trying to cough something up, loss of appetite, lethargy, diarrhea, stomach bloating.

6. Preventing hairballs is important as they can make your dog seriously ill, even resulting in death, here's how:

Groom your dog regularly to remove loose hair.

Vacuum regularly to remove hair from your dog's environment.

Make sure your dog is flea free, licking and biting at fleas can result in the ingestion of hairs.

If you suspect your dog has an allergy due to his / her excessive licking consult your vet.

Make sure your dog always has adequate amounts of clean water and that they are drinking enough. 

Check that your dog's diet includes beneficial oils containing Omega 3 fatty acids.

Try adding pumpkin to your dog's diet it's full of fibre so can help with the elimination process.  

If your dog is licking due to stress try to resolve the stressful situation, if it's due to boredom ensure that your dog has adequate stimulation and isn't left alone for hours on end. 

7. If you have any concerns with regard to dog hairballs you should consult a vet as serious ones can be life threatening. 

    

Dogs do get hairballs here's how I know

The day started brilliantly with an early morning visit to one of my favourite places to play ball. It's brilliant fun, we have more than one ball and they get thrown to me one after the other.

I love this place, it has lots of wonderful smells and I always try to get wet when they get me water. I usually succeed. Then we go home for breakfast and if I've been good I get a treat as well, this time it was a dental stick, I do like those.

Everything was going well, I'd had fun playing, I'd eaten well, I'd enjoyed chewing my dental stick when suddenly I felt strange inside. 

I'd never, ever felt like this before, it was weird like I wanted to be sick but couldn't, like there might be something stuck. I swallowed, I gulped but nothing happened so not knowing what to do I started to lick. I licked the floor, I licked the walls, I was getting quite frantic licking, I couldn't stop. 

This worried the humans, well it worried me too but I wasn't about to let on to them that I was worried, they checked my mouth looking for something stuck in it. They thought I was choking on a piece of the dental chew so they tried the Heimlich maneuver, following instructions in their Bruce Fogel First Aid For Dogs Book. Have to say I'm glad they decided against the small dog routine of holding me by the thighs and swinging me upside down, although maybe that would have been fun. 

Nothing was working, nothing was moving I was still running around licking and gulping, they called the vet.

Of course it had to be out of hours and the emergency vet wasn't even in town, he said he'd see me but having asked if I was breathing normally, I was, and what colour my gums were, normal pink, he suggested that they monitored me. He said that if it was a bit of dental stick stuck it would move by itself though my odd behaviour would last sometime. Also if I started vomiting profusely, once was to be expected, or got diarrhea they should contact him again.

And then it stopped, the strange feeling was gone, I stopped licking the floor, in my humble opinion it's never been so clean, I did a good job. I was back to normal. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief and monitored me, I quite enjoyed all the attention.

It wasn't until next morning that I gagged up a hairball, a flipping hairball I tell you, I am not a cat! 

Apparently dogs who groom excessively, licking themselves a lot can get hairballs. The hair gets swallowed, some comes out in the poo but some gets stuck which is vomited up. If it doesn't come out one end or the other it can get rather dangerous causing a major abdominal blockage which could result in death. 

So now I'm on hairball watch, extra grooming and a look at supplementing my diet with something like fish oils and pumpkin to help keep the hair I digest moving out the right end. As long as it tastes good I don't mind!