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Why NOT to let your dog chew socks etc!!

Karlin

Administrator
Staff member
Larger version of image: http://twitpic.com/4ebjr

4ebjr.jpg


Background to this image: Two posts from Twitter-using vet Pete Wedderburn (Telegraph vet columnist and one of my vets for Irish Cavalier Rescue!) You can follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/petethevet. He posts on patients and often adds images.

This dog ate a sock yesterday - vomiting since, not eating, xrays suggest an obstruction. Beings transferred ...

Here's the xray of the sock swallowing dog. All the black areas are gas-filled distended intestines, typical ...

NB: an intestine in this state can quickly become necrotic -- eg tissue can start to die -- and cause the animal to die painfully and very quickly. So please, please keep items like this well away from dogs that like eating them, and always get a dog to the vet if they are showing worrying symptoms.
 
I can't agree with Karlin more. When Oliver was two he found a cat toy mouse at the pet sitters house (I don't use her anymore) and he swallowed it whole. I was out of town when she called me to tell me that she had taken him to the vet because he wasn't eating and was very lethargic. She had no idea that he had swallowed anything, but it had to be at her house because she has cats and has the exact same toys that he swallowed. Plus he was fine when I left him. I got home 8 hours later and he needed to undergo emergency surgery because the blockage wasn't moving. By the time they did the surgery, two feet of his intestines were necrotic and had to be removed. They even saved the toy mouse for me so I could see what caused all the trouble! He was one sick dog for a while. Luckily he recovered just fine and has no lingering G.I. issues. But it could have been a lot worse.
 
Eating sticks and tiny pebbles are bad.Alfs had a bad habit when out for a walk he would drag his tonge along the ground and eat the tiny stones.In the end we had to avoid pebbley areas.He did grow out of it though.
 
Yes all those things can cause the same type of problem. It's an amazing xray -- Pete had one a few days ago of a needle inside a dog's stomach as well. :eek: Fortunately he got the dog to vomit it back up so no surgery necessary:

43mbw.jpg
 
Dogs will eat almost anything. Chelsea has had problms in the past with colitis from blockage or non pass of rawhides (my DX, vet never came up with anthing). She would have a rawhide and 2 to 3 days later she would puke it up or get sick.

Just this am I caught her out eating grass then vomiting and saw that she vomited up at 6 in peace of felt from a braided felt chew toy. She had forced herself to do this before I figured out to take rawhides out of the pic. Now large flet is off the play list also.
 
We can't have any door mats in the house that Pippin can get to unsupervised after he ate all one edge of one when I was at work. (We'd had him about a year, and the mat had always been there so not sure what made him choose to eat it.:?) That resulted in a night at the vets, and luckily no surgery because he'd chewed the pieces up soooo small that he eventually passed it through naturally.
 
Great post Karlin and others,

And a great reminder for any pet lover.

Incidentally, one of the very next issues of my newsletter is dedicated to this topic. Socks are definitely often removed in my OR, although it seems that we have a tampon special lately... (sorry if it grosses you out, it's true!!!).

Curious?

My newsletter is free, you can subscribe from my web site.

drphilzeltzman - doggie surgeon.
www.drphilzeltzman.com
 
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