I have a four month old lab that suffered from a food related bloat episode last weekend.
He did not exercise before or after eating. He did eat only twice that day rather than 3 times and tends to gulp food as he was "free fed" with many other dogs while with the breeder.

Many sites Googled under "bloat in dogs" suggest that bloat is familial. I did contact the breeder and she wants "her vet to read my vet 's report" - end of conversation.

It upsets me that this happened at such a young age so I am weighing the expense of a proactive stomach tacking but would like to better understand his propensity to have another episode. Can anyone help me understand the issue a little more clearly.

Thank you all.

It can be.

However, if your dog is not use to being 'free fed' then why would the breeder do so?He will obviously gulp his food down if there is competition and complications like bloat will happen.

Sounds fishy to me. Breeders feed litters together. Duh.
Why wouldn't we? Labs gulp, competition or not. They like to eat.
I would be suspicious of a "bloat" episode in a 4 month old puppy and it sounds like your breeder is too.
I am getting the tone of this post as trying to blame the breeder for whatever happened to your puppy. What difference does it make if bloat is familial whether you elect to do a stomach tacking??????
I just feel your pointing fingers and I would not be so quick to agree with a "bloat" dx.

Ps, just add a lot of water to your puppies food and problem solved.

Yes, it is. That's why some breeds are more prone to it than others. Labs are not one of them. If your puppy got bloated, is because he ate something he shouldn't have. There are special plates and balls that you can use at feeding time to slow down the speed.
I would never consider this to be a congenital problem, neither would I do a refund for the puppy.

Labradors ARE prone to bloat/gastric torsions.. but usually between 4-10 years, not months!

Danes & Mastiffs are more prone to bloat that labradors. Something that might help your dog slow down when eating is a BIG rock smack in the middle of the dish. They have to eat around it. Hopefully the snarfing down of food will lessen as time goes by & a new routine is established. Good luck!

Kinda reading this post. Well Good luck carol on the pup.I noticed you mentioned that the breeder free feeds her puppies.I feed my puppies together till they are 7 weeks then they start eating in seperate bowls, so they know how to eat when in a new clients home. But who in the world would feed their adult dogs free feeding of food.If did that my dogs would be enormous and be gorging themselves, I would think a bloat situation would be established with that. Or am I wrong. Who else free feeds their adult dogs whether showing breeding or house lizards

People mean different things when they say Free Feed, but for us, I put down a communal bowl for my puppies until the day they went home with their new parents. They could only eat as much as they wanted in respect to what their littermates allowed. Most seemed to get what they needed. The little guys fell off first, satisfied....the big guys stuck around for clean up.

Information on bloat says "deep chested" dogs are prone. Folks think labs are "deep chested" thus as just as susceptible as danes and bloodhounds etc. Yes it happens. I don't think it happens alot.

I am sorry you went through this with your puppy, but this has absolutely NOTHING to do with your breeder other than if you were looking for someone to hug you and offer some consolation on the scary experience.

Add water to the food, put the food out on a cookie sheet or one of the other methods used to slow a dog down.

Labs do bloat and many have died from it. I have heard of one lab puppy having bloat. So it is possible. Perhaps it would be best to soak your puppies food in lots of water before feeding. Feed several small meals a day instead of 2 big meals.
I would also want my vet to see the report. Not to knock your vet, but that is just the way I do things.
Good Luck and I hope your puppy grows up and has no more problems.

Yes, any breed of dog can bloat. Puppies also get gas, just like babies, and their abdomens can swell a surprising amount. I haven't seen any pups with bloat and torsion, the one that older or cancerous dogs get. Keep an antigas medication, such as Mylicon or Gas Ex in case he gets gas again. Did the puppy's stomach flip or did he just get a lot of air in it, maybe from food, maybe from wormload, as many puppies can get parasite eggs just from a walk? Worms give the belly a bloated appearance. Most puppies have to be wormed, sometimes for weird ones. When they get older, the dogs have more resistance to most parasites.

That being said, puppies that are fed late or on a different schedule may overfeed when the food is offered, and eat too much too fast, gulping air. If he was free fed before, he might not have had to think about filling up at one time but grazed. Maybe he thought he was being starved recently, and ate like a wolf cub who might see food for a few days. I have seen puppies overeat when pinch hitting, caring for kennel raised pups who at too much of their milk, kibble and meat meal, as I misunderstood the owner as to the amount and fed them too much--they ate it ALL, especially since I fed a couple hours later than their normal time due to our schedule differences. It was not nice looking, but they did fine, and I adjusted feeding amounts and timing after a call to the breeder.

This is the reason I never free feed my dogs. I feed them twice a day (adults) so I can be safe to exercise them in between feedings. If I free fed my dogs I would never know when they ate and there fore I would be taking changes on when to exercise.
Even though I feed my dogs twice a day they gulp their food as they are Labradors!!

Food bloat is different than GDV. In food bloat the dog eats so much that when the kibble expands so does the stomach.

If it was a food bloat, it is genetic in the fact that Labs eat too much of everything is given the chance

OMG NO NO NO TO THE ELECTIVE STOMACH TACKING! Holy Hannah, whoever invented this needs a roundhouse! Ugh!I have worked as kennel manager for over 20 years for a Standard Poodle breeder who also has a few Borzoi. Both breeds HIGH prone to bloat. Bloat is a really bad combination of stress, exercise, food and water. Body structure certainly comes into it. Deep chested breeds seem to be more prone and why more Labs doen't bloat from the way they suck back air as the hoover down food is beyond me.
You can't blame bloat on hereditary unless there is a well proven track record with supportive conditions. Yes, in the Standards, there are lines we avoid as too many show dogs or stud dogs 'disappear' suddenly at three or four years of age. I'm not in other peoples homes to see how food is managed or the environment controled in a breed that is structurally prone to bloat. YOU CANNOT FREE FEED A BREED PRONE TO BLOAT. OMG NIGHTMARE! EEEKKK!
Given the fact that you said your 4 month old was used to eating in a pack setting-his habits tell him to "EAT ALL YOU CAN NOW" and he is used to hording food for himself. I'm more upset that a breeder would choose to manager their 'tweens' with free feeding-esp. in a breed such as ours prone to bone/joint issues.
You need to break your dogs meals down into at least three or four a day, you might go and purchase one of those large feeding balls to place his dish to slow him down a bit. The key is smaller meals and teaching him to slow it down.
He would be a bloat candidate given his upbringing at his breeders if he ever got into a bag of dog food and went at it. He would eat until he exploded(well most Labs would anyway). You key now is management.
Again NO TACKING! NON NONONONONONONO :)

I agree that free feeding puppies once the reach 8 weeks of age creates gorging. The only reason I don't feed my puppies separately between 3 and 8 weeks of age is because it is easier to let them all feed from one big bowl. I think it becomes more of an issue from 8 weeks old on as far as learning gorging, eat all I can before the other dog does mentality.

I also discuss the condtio of Bloat with all my families who adopt our pups or adult dogs. Some have never heard of bloat so we talk about how to prevent bloat.

I have always fed my 8 week and older dogs in their crates in the morning before letting them outside. They all come in the house mid day for another meal and then I give them a light snack of kibble just before they go to bed, also in their crate. As the day goes on, their meals get a little smaller.

It is not so easy to draw a full conclusion from what the OP provided.
The 2 meals instead of 3. Does that mean the pup only had 2/3 of its regular daily diet, or did it get 100% of its daily diet in 2 servings? If the latter, then you have a hard time claiming there was anything familial about the episode. The dog simply overate and ate too fast for a single setting.
Carrying this further, it would be good to know if the 2 meals that day were two "normal" meals, or was one a meal where the pup stole into the dog food bag and had all he wanted or at least until he was discovered?
As has been said, Labs will eat, eat and eat some more when given the chance, especially pups that eat competitively...which, even if they were raised that way at the breeder’s, dogs tend to eat that way throughout life if they are near another dog at feeding time that is also eating (competitively and protective of their food). In short, when you have an isolated bloat episode AND it directly coincides with an abnormal eating situation (if only one day), you'd be hard pressed to say it is the breeders fault, too many confounding factors at play. Not to be coarse, but remember when you point a finger, you end up with several on your own hand pointing back at you.
Live, learn, let go, and move on.