I feel for you. My golden started this at 4 years of age. But I relate to your emergency visits and surgeries that your dog needed as did mine for eating anything he could see including my sweaters, carpets etc. It seems the swallowing and gulping came first so if I am not at home I put him in a crate without a dog bed. I have done this for the past year and although he has episodes from time to time , he will not randomly eat if he knows that I am here.
He has been on erythromycin, pepsid, and cisapride for years now. Don’t know for sure if it helps but am scared to take him off of it.
He just turned 11……….I never thought he would make it to 11 so I got a puppy a couple of years ago and my older golden is as happy as he has ever been.
The few times I have seen him do the gulping, I give him Sucralfate mushed up with water and in a syringe.
He had 3 surgeries because of the items he ate that got blocked up in his intestine.
I am sorry you had to put your dog to sleep. It is so hard to watch this gulping-swallowing episodes and we may never know why they happen. But for me the key thing , for me, was keeping him in a crate, when I was not at home so he could not eat things .
The crate costs a lot less than the surgeries!
I haven’t experienced any seizures when this happens and my vet hesitated to put him on seizure meds as well as long term metronaidazol.
I hope this helps someone out there. I felt so alone until I found this website.
