When dogs and cats eat weird things
The annual state veterinary association convention is one of my favorite events of the year. The meeting brings together vets from all over the state, giving them an opportunity to update their clinical knowledge and connect and reconnect with friends and colleagues.
During the final evening of this year’s meeting in Rapid City I found myself doing just that with a table full of veterinarian friends. The conversation eventually coalesced around a single topic – weird things we’ve surgically removed from the bellies of dogs and cats!
It was a hearty discussion that everyone was able to contribute to since some animals will swallow about anything! Offending objects mentioned by the group included golf balls, corn cobs, toy action figures, socks and underwear. My personal contribution to the roundtable was a young lab brought to me because of persistent vomiting. He felt unusually heavy when I lifted him onto the exam table. Upon examination, his abdomen felt like he had rocks in his stomach. This was because he actually had rocks in his stomach! This dog had the eccentric habit of flipping landscape rocks into the air and swallowing them. I surgically retrieved 110 small river rocks from his stretched-out stomach!
Every vet who works on pets has a foreign object story. A while back, a veterinary magazine had a “contest” where vets could submit interesting abdominal X-rays they had taken. The most impressive entrant was an X-ray showing a barbecue skewer extending from the bottom of the belly to the backbone of a 6-year-old German Shorthair (who did fine after surgery). That one won the contest!
These indiscriminate eaters tend to be younger, inquisitive animals with a knack for chewing and getting into things they shouldn’t. Any animal can eat something they shouldn’t, but in my experience young, crazy Labrador Retrievers were well represented in this population!
When brough to the vet clinic, these patients typically have been vomiting for several days, unable to keep food down. They’re usually healthy animals with an abrupt onset of these signs. Vomiting isn’t specific to gastrointestinal blockage by foreign objects, though – it can have a long list of possible causes. Among the most common of these are simple cases of gastritis due to garbage-can dining sprees, when the animal eats something that doesn’t agree with them.
But unlike these temporary gut irritations, vomiting doesn’t resolve on its own when a blockage is present. When an object entering the gastrointestinal tract can’t follow its normal path out the body, the body tries to expel it by vomiting.
Many foreign bodies – especially those that are dense or metallic — are easily diagnosed with X-rays. But others, such as fabric or certain rubber balls have a density similar to the abdominal organs and blend in on an X-ray. For these, the veterinarian feeds the animal a “contrast” solution that radiographically outlines the foreign invader.
Once the diagnosis is made, the question turns to treatment. Occasionally an owner will see the dog eat the offending object and we can induce the dog to throw it up. This only works if the object is still in the stomach. Allowing the object to come out the other end is sometimes possible if it’s small enough and the animal is big enough.
For most of the cases that end up in the vet’s office, the object isn’t budging and we have to go in and get it. Many companion animal vet practices have endoscopes – long fiber optic tubes with grabbers — that can be snaked down the esophagus to retrieve objects. In other cases, surgery is necessary.
Fortunately, these cases usually have happy endings. The (typically) young and otherwise healthy patients bounce back quickly. However, if the object perforates the intestines, leaking contaminated material into the abdomen, the situation can be life-threatening. A common example of this is when a cat eats a string. The string can get hung up while the intestines keep moving around it. If this goes on long enough, the string can wear holes in the gut.
Most of the time, our animals’ dietary indiscretions “pass” right through them, but sometimes they create more stubborn issues. If you suspect something is blocking up your pet (and you’re missing landscape rocks!) contact your veterinarian promptly!
Russ Daly, DVM, is the Extension Veterinarian at South Dakota State University. He can be reached via e-mail at[email protected] or at 605-688-5171.
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