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This describes better what happened yesterday.

Important Information for dog lovers and owners.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/118532/canine_bloat_an_emergency_that_can.html

I'm 21 years old, with a part time job and going to school, I have a cat and a dog, we all live with my mom and dad who at the time had both gone out of town, dad was on a business trip and mom was up north, out of reach. Our miniature Schnauzer, Jasmine, is fifteen years old. We got her as a puppy, met her parents and her brother before taking her home, we've trained her in simple ways, just house breaking and what not, we're not dog show people, and we don't take pride in cheap animal tricks, but we loved her very much as she was friendly and loyal through her fifteen years.

The day before yesterday, I came down with some sort of cold, since Jasmine is fifteen now we have to make sure we let her out often during the day, I'd been asleep all day and had woken up at midnight to let her out. She has a bad back, and when we wake her she jumps, so she jumped, and then she started to cough, I got her to crawl part way out of her bed so she wouldn't puke in it but as though she'd given up she fell to the ground, still coughing. Immediately after she'd thrown herself to her side, sticking her front and back legs out straight and stiff, arching her head sharply back. Her coughing had stopped and a gurgling scream broke through what ever it was she was choking on.

Sometime after that she'd began to breath in short rugged breaths, for the rest of the night until my morning class at 7:40, which I only stuck around long enough for to take the quiz, then went home and scheduled an appointment at the Boise Bench Animal Hospital. They couldn't get me in until 10:15. So I waited, she was still breathing like that and had begun to cough up a clear liquid. I hadn't noticed that her chest was bigger, in fact I though just the opposite, it looked to me as though her back end had shrunk, but when I think back to it, Her chest was indeed much larger than was normal for her.

When I finally got in to see the doctor, the nurse lifted Jasmine up on the table, and having done so caused her to cough up, this time, pink liquid, apparently pink meant there was blood in her vomit. (This next point is important for all dog owners to note) The doctor came in and lifted up Jasmine's lip, looking at her gums, I saw them and they were indeed white as printer paper, she was pale, he said it meant she was somehow loosing blood somewhere internally. They both took her in the back to get an xray, and something else they called CBC. (I think is stands for Complete Blood Count, that's what shows up in google)

When the doctor came back in he told me it wasn't good. She'd lost a lot of blood, he took me in the back to see her xray where I saw something the size of a giant grapefruit. It was her stomach. He told me it had filled with gas and swelled to that size and then turned in her body so that the gas couldn't escape. It was pushing up under her diaphragm, obstructing her breathing, her intestinal area had become inflamed, her lungs had filled with blood that was leaking from her stomach, and her kidney's had failed. He said that they could operate within an hour but he would suggest euthanization instead. The surgery didn't promise much, just a little more time. I'd called dad and told him what was going on, I was having trouble talking by this time so the doctor came and told him what the situation was instead.

Once the doctor had left dad and I began discussing what we should do, while we were doing that the doctor came back in with a small pink bottle "I'm going to go ahead and put her down, she's in a lot of pain and I'm pretty sure she won't last until surgery." he said, I told dad in a choked voice and the door closed, I opened it up again and saw the nurse. "Can i see her?" I asked in a high pitched voice. "I don't think you want to sweety" I didn't give a ********, she's my baby, I didn't care how horrible she looked. I ignored the nurse's comment and pushed by her to Jasmine, she was laying on her side on a table, her tongue hanging out, looking straight ahead and breathing slowly now. "Can I touch her I asked?" The nurse nodded, I told dad I was with her, I heard him starting to cry as well. I leaned down to her to look into her eyes and the nurse said they weren't working anymore, her sight had already failed. She is partially deaf so I didn't know if she would hear me either but I tried, I leaned down and called to her, I told her I was with her, I have a specific way of petting my cat Cleo, and Jasmine so I'm hoping she knew it was me who was stroking her head gently, I even tried to mimmick mom's strokes.

Her rising and falling ribs stopped eventually and she began to lightly convulse, "She's gone sweety..." The nurse said. I'd always thought that would bother me, the convulsing, and it did, but being with her, and not letting go of her body was more important to me, but the nurse eventually pulled me away, telling me I had to fill out forms, to be honest, as nice as she was I wanted to slap her so many times. I wasn't ready to leave Jasmine's body, even if she was gone.

When this all started, I thought Jasmine was having simple breathing problems, asthma or something. We had a vet tell us a long time ago she gets reverse hiccups he called them, I thought maybe it was another version of that. I had no idea when it started that it would be her end. It seemed so insignificant that I didn't plan to do anything until morning. The screaming part was serious, but that was because her hips and back lock up, they'd been doing that for half a year or so, and we'd already had that looked at so I knew what that was about.

When I took Jasmine in yesterday morning to have the breathing problem checked out, I had no idea it would be my last time seeing her.

I looked up bloated stomach and canine on google, some of the medical terms I saw were Turned Stomach, and Gastric Dilatation. It's most common with big dogs but has been known to affect smaller ones too. If I'd known this, like I bet so many others wish they'd known too. Jasmine might still be here with me.