Excessive Drooling

For the past month or so, Sidney seems to start drooling a lot when he isn't feeling well.  Well, it has been happening longer than a month - but this month seems like it is more constant.  He will sit up as straight as he can because it might make him feel better like his Bailey Chair does with his food.  But it's one of those things where we don't know really what else to do.  We will put him in his chair for a while - but that doesn't seem to do much.  I think he may just need to regurgitate to get out whatever is making him feel uncomfortable.  But I really can't force that to happen.  And don't want to.

Basically we just sit with him and pet him while he is sitting up and drooling and wipe his mouth.  These episodes pass - but I really hope they go away.  He doesn't seem like he is in pain or anything.  He just seems uncomfortable, like indigestion.  I am guessing something is stuck in a pocket in his esophagus that causes him to feel like this and drool excessively.  Poor guy.  For now we will just do what we can to make him feel better and loved.  Because that's all we can do when this happens.

Well, to be safe I took him to the vet.  They checked him out and did X-Rays, etc.  Basically he is fine - nothing like Aspiration Pneumonia or something stuck in his esophagus.  It could be he has more acid reflux than normal getting out of his stomach and into his esophagus - making him uncomfortable.  The Vet looked up to see his maximum Prilosec (omeprozale) dosage.  We can increase it for a dog Sid's size and weight to 40mg (which is 2 pills at night instead of one).  We will give this a try and hopefully it helps!  I know some people use a Pro-Collar to try and keep their dog's head elevated which he sleeps.  We tried this for a while and ended up having to buy a few because Sid chewed them up - he just doesn't like wearing them.  We'll see if he will need to get used to it at night again this time - but we will wait and see if it comes to that.

UPDATE 2/13/13 - It seems like the 40mg of Prilosec (Target brand omeprozale) has worked - he seems to be much better now.  My only concern is what if he gets used to this dosage and it comes back - this is our maximum dosage.  I may try and decrease him down to 20mg at the end of the month and see if nothing changes, that way when he gets bad like earlier I can up his dosage back to 40mg until the episode passes.