Eating things they shouldn’t be!

[Haley, Yeti, and Phin]

This morning yeti threw up a headband. I’m curious how long that could have been in his tummy. My boyfriend and I are racking our brains and we can’t figure out when he could have gotten this. The only insistent I can think of is last Sunday but I’m feeling like if he would have gotten it last night he would have thrown it up awhile ago. What are everyone’s thoughts?

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

It's possible for an indigestible foreign object to remain in the GI tract for a period of time. JD once had a shard from a ham bone in his stomach for a couple of weeks. He ate & pooped normally the entire time and it was only when he started a drug that nauseated him that he brought it up. 

The big problem with this is that it can lead to the development of serious digestive disease like Inflammatory Bowel Disease. The presence of a foreign object can trigger the immune system to produce antibodies, and an inflammatory condition is created. If that happens, you have an immune-mediated disease that costs about $3000 to diagnose and is incurable; management is difficult, expensive, and for life. 

You are also lucky that the headband didn't cause an obstruction, which would require surgery. And soft fabric objects can also wrap around organs or get tangled up, causing a loss of blood supply to those organs, which will also create a dangerous situation. 

So, you dodged a bullet...this time. The bottom line is that with dogs like this, who ingest non-food items, you really have to watch them like a hawk, both indoors and out. Training (leave it, drop it) helps, as well as making sure there is nothing within reach that could tempt them. I cannot emphasize this enough. One swallowed sock has cost many a dog his life, if not immediately, then down the road. It can also cost the owner thousands of dollars. 

[Haley, Yeti, and Phin]

Thank you so much Karen. We will do better at making sure things are out of his reach.

[Judy, Meg & Polly Wolly Doodle]

My Polly ate half of a little teddy bear while at the groomer and nobody knew.  She also seemed perfectly normal until she threw it up in front of me almost two weeks later.  The vet did x-rays twice to make sure there was nothing hung up anywhere.  The groomer felt awful, recognized the toy, paid for the x-rays and there are no plush toys left at her shop and we don't keep soft toys either.  We know that could have been disastrous and we are if we take our girls visiting that there are no toys down that could cause that again.

[Cathy and Daisy and Harper]

It always makes me wonder why dogs don't have some sort of built in system that instinctively tells them not to eat non food items. Glad yours is ok!