Yum, Yum

My mom (Dr. Clytee Gold) sometimes tells about a couple of memorable surgeries here at Forest Hills Pet Care. One was a dog that came in sick--and the x-ray just showed that his stomach had turned to solid metal. When she opened the dog up, she found...hundreds of pennies, nickles, dimes, and quarters. The dog had eaten a jar of change. Another similar incidence revealed that a dog had eaten a stuffed animal. The surgery, my mom tells, almost felt like a C-section: as she opened the dog up, the eyes of the stuffed animal were peering up at her. Our dog Bomb once decided to fill her belly up with the long leaves of a plant in our yard. She couldn't digest them, and she got sicker and sicker until she had surgery to empty out her stomach.

It turns out, though, that a lot of animals eat odd objects and need surgery to help them out. This article by the Washington Post doesn't just tell the story of these poor pets, but shows the x-rays that surprised the vets treating them.