Dog Hairball Remedy: What You Are Actually Looking At

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Quick Facts

A hairball is the least likely explanation for a dog retching. Dogs rarely get true hairballs, because their tongues are soft and they do not groom like cats. What you are usually seeing is an unsettled stomach. What you must not miss is bloat.

We are not vets. This is research we did because we sit with other people's dogs and we wanted to know what we were looking at, and because "dog hairball remedy" is one of the most searched dog symptoms there is while being one of the least accurate descriptions of what is actually happening.

The whole process of sitting, from first application to handover, is in our book Travel More for Less. For most of Europe we point sitters at TrustedHouseSitters first, partly because of the vet line I come back to below.

Do Dogs Even Get Hairballs?

Yes, but rarely, and the reason is worth understanding because it explains why a "hairball remedy" is usually the wrong thing to reach for.

Hair that an animal swallows normally passes through the digestive tract and comes out in the faeces. A hairball, properly called a trichobezoar, forms when too much hair is swallowed, or when it wraps around something in the stomach, and the resulting clump gets too big to pass. Then it either causes discomfort or gets vomited up.

That happens in cats far more than dogs, for two reasons that vets consistently give.

The tongue. A cat's tongue is covered in small backwards-pointing spines that comb through the coat and pull out a great deal of loose fur, which the cat then swallows. A dog's tongue is soft. Dogs do groom, particularly their paws, but they do not groom their whole body the way a cat does, so they swallow far less hair in the first place.

The digestive tract. Cats are obligate carnivores and have a shorter digestive tract, because meat is easier to digest than plant matter. Dogs are omnivores with a longer tract, which appears to handle hair more efficiently. Not a lot of hair goes in, and more of what does goes through.

So when a dog does bring up a hairball, it is worth paying attention rather than shrugging at it. Vets point out that a dog producing hairballs may be over-grooming, and that over-grooming is often a sign of something else: stress, anxiety, or an area of skin that is itchy or painful and being licked constantly. A hairball can be the visible symptom of a problem somewhere else.

The practical version: if a dog you are sitting brings up a hairball once, note it and tell the owner. If it keeps happening, that is a conversation with a vet rather than a remedy.

What You Are Actually Looking At

This is the useful part. Retching and dry heaving in a dog has a short list of causes, and one of them is a genuine emergency. Sorting between them is the whole skill, and it is something a sitter can learn in five minutes.

Note where a hairball sits on that list, and note what is at the bottom of it. The symptom people search a hairball remedy for is the same symptom that indicates the most dangerous thing on the list, and the difference is not what comes up. It is whether it keeps happening.

The One That Kills: Retching and Bloat

Bloat, properly gastric dilatation and volvulus, is when the stomach fills with gas and twists on itself. The twist closes the entrance and the exit and cuts the blood supply, and once it starts, death can follow within hours. If the twisted stomach is not corrected surgically within a couple of hours, death is likely.

Repeated retching with nothing coming up is the classic sign. Not a single heave. Retching over and over, with the dog unable to settle and a belly that looks swollen and feels tight like a drum. Add panting, drooling, pacing, or an animal looking at its own flank, and you are past monitoring.

Large and deep-chested breeds are at higher risk, and so are dogs fed one large meal a day, fast eaters, and anxious dogs. But it can happen in any breed, and it is rare in cats. We covered the full picture on what cannot wait, and if you have a deep-chested dog on your sit it is worth reading before the sit rather than during one. Looking after dogs during a sit covers the day to day, and rescue dogs are a different temperament again.

The reason this matters on a hairball page is simple. Every home remedy for hairballs is a delay. If the dog is retching with nothing coming up, an oil, a butter, a tablespoon of something, is time spent not driving to a vet. That is what makes the popular advice dangerous rather than merely useless.

Once Is Fine, Repeated Is a Phone Call

This is the rule we actually use, and it has held up across 20 sits.

If a dog retches once and then goes back to normal, eating, drinking, wanting to go out, it is almost certainly something on its stomach that was uncomfortable and has passed. We have seen this on several sits. Some dogs dry heave occasionally and then carry on entirely unbothered. Watch, note the time, and mention it to the owner in your next update.

If it keeps happening, that is the point to stop watching and start asking. Repeated retching is the trigger. Not a single episode, however alarming it looks. Repetition is the thing.

And when you do ask, ask two people at once: the owner and a vet. Message the owner so they know what you are seeing, and use the vet line at the same time. If you are on TrustedHouseSitters Standard or Premium, that 24-hour line is staffed by vets, and it exists for exactly this. We have used it more than once and it has never once been a wasted call. For the wider safety picture, is house sitting safe is the place to start.

The honest thing about that call is that the answer is often reassuring and simple. You describe what you are seeing, and the answer comes back that it sounds like an unsettled stomach, keep an eye on it, ring the local vet if anything changes. That is the outcome most of the time, and there is no way to get to it except by asking.

What to Say When You Call

Vets and vet lines ask the same four things, so having them ready makes the call short and the answer better.

What it looks like and how many times. Retching with nothing coming up is a different report from bringing something up. So is once versus six times in ten minutes. When it started, because a timeline tells them whether this is settling or escalating. What the dog has eaten, including anything it should not have. And what the dog is doing now, which is the question that matters most: is it up and about and interested, or flat, restless, or unable to settle.

Have the owner's vet details and the dog's records to hand before you ring, and know who is paying. Who pays for vet care on a sit covers that side, and what to do when the owner is unreachable covers the escalation if nobody answers.

Shedding Is the Real Hairball Problem

Here is the honest truth about hair and dogs, from a sitter's point of view: the dog is almost never the problem. The house is.

We looked after a Swiss Shepherd on one sit. White hair, everywhere, constantly. The floors were grey tiles, which meant you could see every single hair the moment it landed. Vacuuming made almost no difference, and we ended up vacuuming the dog itself from time to time, which it did not mind in the slightest. It was not unwell. It was not producing hairballs. It was simply a large double-coated dog doing exactly what large double-coated dogs do, and the entire job was keeping the house looking as though a dog did not live there.

That is what "hairball season" actually means for a house sitter. Not a medical event, but a cleaning one. If the dog is also anxious, which is one reason dogs over-groom, separation anxiety on a sit covers that side. Grooming during a sit covers the practical side, and if you are sitting a heavy shedder it is worth asking the owner where the good vacuum lives and how often they normally do it, because your standard and theirs may not match.

Remedies: What Is Safe and What Is Not

Since people arrive here looking for a remedy, it is worth being straight about the ones that get passed around.

Mineral oil, petroleum jelly and butter are the classic internet hairball remedies. We would not give any of them without a vet telling us to. They are not harmless, they can cause their own digestive problems, and they treat a condition that your dog probably does not have.

Adding water or moisture to food is safe, sensible and does nothing harmful. It does not treat a hairball either, but it is a harmless thing to do while you are deciding whether to call.

A little sardine water over the food is the one we do use, though not for this. If a dog or a cat is off its food, a spoonful of the water from a tin of sardines in spring water is the thing that gets them eating when nothing else will. They go mad for it. It is not a treatment for anything, it is a way to get a fussy animal to eat, and it has worked for us more than once.

Regular grooming and a good vacuum are the actual answer to hair, and neither of them is a remedy because there is nothing to remedy. If you are worried about how much hair a dog is swallowing, brush it. That is the whole intervention.

If the animal is on medication already, giving a pet medication covers the interactions worth knowing. And the general rule, which is ours and which we hold firmly: we would rather not give an animal something we are not sure about than give it and find out later, with diarrhoea and a vet trip. You are there for a few weeks or months. After that the owner takes over. Stick to the routine, stick to what is in the welcome guide, and do not introduce anything new.

Tell the Owner What Their Dog Does

The single most useful thing a homeowner can do before a sit is tell the sitter what is normal for their animal, because the sitter has no way of knowing.

We sat a dog in Manosque where the owners told us on the video call that it had epileptic fits, that they did not know when they would happen or why, and that it was once or twice a year. That single sentence changed everything about how we would have reacted. If it had happened during the sit, we would have known it was known, that it was within this dog's normal, and that we did not need to panic and rush it to a hospital. Without that information, the same event would have been terrifying.

It is not only the dramatic conditions. On a different sit we knew before we arrived that the dog had hurt its leg jumping a fence. That is why, over two weeks, we were watching it every single day and asking ourselves one question: is this getting better or worse? When it looked slightly worse, we messaged the owner. They said we could take it to a vet if we thought it necessary, but that the main thing was to keep monitoring. Later they took it in themselves and it turned out to have a chip in the bone. It was still limping years afterwards.

Two things come out of that. Assess daily and communicate, so the owner is never surprised. And ask about anything you see, however small, because an owner who has had an animal for years already knows the answer. The pre-sit questions and the handover checklist are where this belongs, and sitting with a pet that is already unwell covers the harder version. An older animal with new symptoms is also worth a different lens, which senior pets sets out.

Over-Communicating Beats Under-Communicating

If you take one thing from this page, take this. When you are unsure, tell the owner and ring the vet. Both, not one.

It can feel like an awkward question, and it is not. It saves you the stress of sitting in somebody else's house wondering whether everything is going to be alright, and it removes the chance that the animal is at risk while you talk yourself out of asking. A message that turns out to be nothing costs the owner thirty seconds. The alternative costs a great deal more.

Over-communicating is better than under-communicating, every single time. Nobody has ever been annoyed to receive a message saying "here is what I am seeing, is this normal for her?" Plenty of people would be furious to find out three days later that you noticed something and said nothing. It is also worth knowing where you stand if it goes wrong before it does.

Where This Research Comes From

We are not vets and we have not tested any of this on an animal. Here is where it comes from, so you can check it yourself.

On why dogs rarely get hairballs: the Kennel Club, the British Veterinary Association and the Animal Medical Center of New York, explaining the tongue anatomy and the difference between a cat's short carnivore digestive tract and a dog's longer omnivore tract.

On bloat and retching: the veterinary guidance we used for our emergency page, where the timeline and the signs are set out in full.

On what is safe to give: the ASPCA's guidance on people foods, and our own safe food list, which covers what you can offer and what you should not.

If the animal has eaten something rather than simply retched, what to do when a pet eats something dangerous is the page for that, and poisonous plants covers the garden side.

Conclusion

Dogs rarely get hairballs, so a "hairball remedy" is usually treating the wrong thing, and the thing it might be masking is the one that matters. Repeated retching with nothing coming up is bloat until proven otherwise, and no home remedy is worth the delay.

What actually works is much simpler. Watch the first episode rather than reacting to it. Treat repetition as the signal. Message the owner and the vet line together, because that is what they are for. And stick to the routine the dog already has, because almost every problem we could cause as sitters comes from changing something that did not need changing.

Caro and I have completed 20 house sits across 12 countries, driven 19,000km across Europe in our 1998 VW T4, and saved over $26,500 in accommodation costs over three years of house sitting.

DM us @housesittersguide, we answer everyone.

Frequently Asked Questions

• Do dogs get hairballs?

  Rarely, but it does happen. Cats get them far more often because their tongues are covered in backwards-pointing spines and they groom their whole body, so they swallow much more hair. A dog's tongue is soft and it grooms far less.

• What is the best home remedy for a dog hairball?

  We would not give one without a vet telling us to. Mineral oil, petroleum jelly and butter are the ones passed around online, and none of them are harmless. If the dog is retching repeatedly, a remedy is a delay rather than a treatment.

• Why is my dog retching but nothing comes up?

  Usually an unsettled stomach, but repetition changes everything. A single episode followed by normal behaviour is usually nothing. Retching over and over with nothing coming up is the classic sign of bloat, which is a time-critical emergency.

• How do I tell a hairball from bloat?

  A hairball comes up. Bloat does not. With bloat the dog retches repeatedly and produces nothing, cannot settle, and the belly looks swollen and feels tight. If that is what you are seeing, go to a vet rather than monitoring.

• Should I give my dog butter or oil for a hairball?

  Not without veterinary advice. Oils and fats can cause their own digestive problems, and they treat a condition your dog most likely does not have. Ask a vet or the 24-hour line your platform provides, and do what they say.

• When should I call a vet about retching?

  When it keeps happening. Repetition is the trigger, not severity. One episode and back to normal: watch and tell the owner. Repeated retching, or a swollen belly, or an animal that cannot settle: ring the owner and the vet line at the same time.

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