Dogs typically only need to go the vet once a year, but if they chow down on 62 hair bands, four rubber bands, eight pairs of underwear, and a bandage, as Tiki the Labrador did, they’ll have to go back a few times.
Sara Weiss, Tiki’s owner, told Pittsburgh TV station WTAE that she knew her lab had a taste for non-food items. She’d apparently swallowed a NERF dart before, but the toy had passed through her digestive system just fine.
When the dog wasn’t feeling well, Weiss took her to the vet, who prescribed her medicine. When the medicine didn’t help Tiki’s condition, they X-rayed her, and found a mass in her stomach.
Dr. Hisham Ibrahim, known as “Doctor I,” of Good Shepherd Veterinary Hospital then performed a two-hour surgery at the end of June, WTAE reported.
“‘Doctor I’ started pulling handfuls of different items out,” Emily Cottle, the head technician at Good Shepherd Veterinary Hospital, told WTAE. “It was quite an experience to see.”
“I found this hair band attached to another hair band to another one to another one and to other things again,” said Ibrahim.
This sort of thing isn’t totally unheard of. Last year, a Great Dane made national headlines when it ate 43 and a half socks. The clinic that removed the Great Dane’s footwear blockage submitted his X-rays to the annual “They Ate WHAT?” contest, and won the $500 third prize. The Great Dane lost to a frog who’d eaten 30 rocks from the bottom of its cage, and a German shorthaired pointer who swallowed a metal shish kabob skewer.
In fact, Ibrahim also removed 15 pacifiers from the stomach of another dog prior to Tiki’s “really amazing” case.
Fortunately, Tiki recovered, despite her appetite for all things elastic.
“It was just amazing, and it’s not easy,” said Ibrahim. “But, thank God, we were able to pull through, and Tiki has recovered very well.”