Your Pet Ate What?!!   

Does your dog's favorite foods include dirty socks, plastic lids or other non-edible items? Does your cat have a taste for shoelaces? While it may seem amusing (unless your dog swallows a treasured piece of jewelry, as in the picture above),  eating non-food items could lead to serious health problems.

The Risks

Swallowed objects, known as foreign bodies, can become lodged somewhere along the gastrointestinal tract. This obstruction leads to vomiting and dehydration, which can rapidly become very severe. In addition, foreign bodies can cause damage to the gastrointestinal tract, tissue death and perforation of internal organs. In some cases --especially when toxic objects like mothballs and vitamins are ingested--these damaging effects can be fatal.

What to Do

To prevent the problem, restrict your pet's access to items they could ingest, especially if they make a habit of eating foreign bodies. If you notice your pet has swallowed a household object, seek medical attention immediately. A veterinarian may need to surgically remove the object and treat any dehydration and electrolyte loss that may have occurred. Pets with straightforward cases may only need to stay one or two nights in the hospital, while more severe cases may require many days in intensive care. The vast majority of pets recover with few to no side effects.

Your Pet Ate What?   

For fun, we asked each of the associate veterinarians at Dedham Veterinary Associates and Buzzards Bay Veterinary Associates to recall their most interesting foreign body case.

Dr. Kathleen Fox: When I was an intern I saw a dog that had eaten a set of car keys. The owner would jiggle his keys to signal that the dog was going for a car ride, and the dog got very excited, jumped up and gobbled the keys.

Dr. Amy Kuo:  I once saw a dog that ate a whole pile of those smooth rocks used to decorate the area around a pool. He needed a gastrotomy, but did fine. It was hard to believe that they tasted good enough to eat so many!

Dr. Elaine Gilleece: I saw a Golden Retriever that swallowed an entire bath towel. He lost several inches of his intestines from the damage but recovered fine after surgery.

Dr. Jamie Fournier: I recently saw a dog that had to have a large collection of items, including four pairs of socks, five pairs of underwear and three bras, removed from his stomach.

Dr. Beverly Mason: For me, it was a cat that had eaten a teacup hook-yes, the kind you screw into the wall to hang your cups from. The owners never figured out how he unscrewed the hook to eat it!