Eater of the Strange

Hello, Care Animal Hospital clients and friends!  Since I have worked at CAH for nearly five years, you have probably seen me around the hospital now and again.  I am currently enrolled in veterinary school, so I work at the hospital when I can on Saturdays and during breaks from school.  What you are most likely to remember about me is that I own what Dr. Garnett calls an “eater of the strange.”  

Dylan is a five-year-old yellow Labrador; you can see him as the poster child for after hours care at this web address:http://www.careanimal.com/after_hours.html.  He has been treated for “foreign body ingestion” a number of times.  For the record, Dylan has eaten a soccer ball, garden hose, printer cartridge, sprinkler heads, flip flops, and a variety of inappropriate food items.  My house is definitely baby-proofed; we have heavy-lidded trash cans and we have to close most of our rooms off during the day so that Dylan does not get into anything.  Unfortunately, my husband has never owned a dog who can easily reach food at counter height, so we have had a series of ingestion incidents since our wedding in June. 

One Monday, Dylan helped himself to a box full of snacks from a dance that we host every Sunday night.  He must have eaten three boxes of cherry chip cookies from King Soopers!  Luckily, nothing came of that incident, but the following day, my husband inadvertently left a collection of rotting vegetables on the counter.  Dylan then helped himself to some broccoli and a large corn cob.   We took Dylan to CSU’s veterinary hospital immediately to induce vomiting, and thought that he successfully vomited all of the corn.   That was three weeks ago.

Symptoms of obstruction include lack of defecation, lethargy and vomiting.  In all of Dylan’s eating episodes, he had never vomited, but yesterday was different.  My husband came home after a full day of work to approximately 10 large piles of vomit on the floor.  He knew immediately that Dylan would probably need surgery and rushed him to CSU’s hospital.  Soft tissue surgeons there confirmed the need for immediate surgery.  There was a definite large mass seen in radiographs (x-rays) that was unlikely to move through the intestines without perforation (creating a hole in the intestinal lining, allowing food contents to spill into the abdominal cavity). 

Since I am a veterinary student, I got to stay with Dylan through the surgery and observe the procedure.  When the surgeon removed the foreign object from Dylan’s intestines, I was shocked to see that it was a piece of corn cob!  The surgeon confirmed that the corn could have been in Dylan’s stomach for the past three weeks, and that it may only have passed into the intestines recently. 

Dylan is painful right now, but seems to be getting better and is still as interested as ever in eating!  He can only have small frequent meals so that we don’t put too much strain on the intestine that was obstructed.  You can see Dylan recovering and the length of his abdominal incision site in the pictures below.

So, what should you do if you own an eater of the strange?

1.       If your dog seems painful, lethargic, is vomiting or has trouble defecating, call Care Animal Hospital right away! 

2.       If you see your dog eat something strange, don’t assume that it is benign or that it will make its way through the intestines. The longer we wait, the higher the chance of obstruction, and some surprising food and non-food items can be toxic to our pets. 

3.       GET INSURANCE!  Luckily, Dylan has pet insurance, so my cost for this incident won’t be quite as high as it would be otherwise.  Get a Pet Insurance Quote

Thanks for reading!  Feel free to contact Care Animal Hospital with questions about foreign body ingestion. 

--Lisa S., Exam Room Assistant