Who Moved My Bone?

Do you ever wonder why life lessons rarely come without physical, emotional and/or financial pain? I certainly do, especially after the events that cascaded the past month.

3-4 weeks before Thanksgiving we were in a certain pet supply store and they had all of their Halloween stuff marked down. Not being able to pass up a dog toy clearance sale we purchased a couple of soft plastic rubbery toys that squeaked: a pumpkin and a Frankenstein head both about the size of your fist. Bosley and Emma love these simple kinds of squeaky dog toys and the pumpkin and Frankenstein were no exception.

The week before Thanksgiving Bosley began to act like he was not very interested in his food which was unusual. He was still eating just without his usual vigor. He was also still going to the bathroom normally so we decided to just keep watching him. A few days later in the middle of the night, he vomited. Upon examining the vomit we discovered pieces of what used to be Frankenstein. It immediately hit us this must have been the cause of his unusual behavior and he immediately began acting like he felt better.

We left town over Thanksgiving to visit family and Bosley stayed at Grandma’s, one of his favorite places. When we got back into town I picked up Bosley and we went back to our normal routine. A few days later Bosley once again began acting like he was not very interested in his food but continued to eat and go to the bathroom.

Then, once again in the middle of the night he vomited but it was just liquid, no food, no Frankenstein, etc. At this point we decided to take him to the veterinarian. We explained to our vet that he had vomited pieces of a toy and was not eating with the same vigor as usual. She decided to x-ray his stomach and sure enough there were definitely some foreign objects in there, most likely the rest of Frankenstein. Since the pieces were still in his stomach our veterinarian decided to induce vomiting in an attempt to avoid surgery. He ended up vomiting several additional pieces of Frankenstein and we hoped that was all of it. However, an x-ray after the fact verified there were still some large pieces left in his stomach. Back to the vomiting, but they would not come up and his throat was really irritated from the throwing up the pieces of Frankenstein. Out of fear of the remaining pieces moving into his intestine and causing a blockage or damaging his esophagus we opted for surgery to have the pieces removed. It was already a miracle that the pieces had remained in his stomach so long, possibly 3-4 weeks, and had not moved into his intestines causing blockage. Our veterinarian successfully removed the remaining pieces of Frankenstein which were clearly too large to be vomited up or come out the other end.

What I’ve learned:We trusted Bosley to be unsupervised with the toys because while he has always been destructive he has never in his life shown any desire to eat foreign objects. Lesson learned: no more unsupervised toy chewing for Bosley. Just because it had never happened before doesn’t mean it won’t happen.

The toy which was originally relatively soft plastic turned hard as a rock once it was in his stomach. I do not know specifically what caused this, possibly the stomach acids and bile. Whatever the case may be the toy becoming rock hard is likely what caused it to remain in his stomach. It became too rigid to go back up his throat or down the other direction.

So, always supervise your pets when they are chewing on toys, those soft plastic toys apparently become very hard once in your 4-legged critters belly.

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