The surgeon from the vet school telephoned this morning. He was very happy with Beanie’s recovery and told us we could collect her whenever we liked. We jumped in the car right away.

Despite being quite heavily sedated she managed a wag of her tail and wiggle of her bum when she saw us. We were also handed a little package with the offending items in it:

It was quite a relief to see that the ‘gray plastic guttering’ that they’d told us about was in fact the soft plastic material from the ball she’d been playing with in the park. For some reason the acid in her stomach had hardened the soft, fabric like pieces of material and turned them into large, sharp pieces of plastic. This explained why it didn’t just work it’s way through her system. It’s still a concern that she’s started swallowing things, but at least we know when this happened and can stop her from playing chases with unknown objects in future.

Ah – you found my favourite toy!

He did tell us that we are very lucky that we got it checked out so early. He said that she’d have been in real trouble if any of the pieces had made their way into her intestines. I think we might well have missed it if she didn’t sleep in our room.

I’m pleased to say that little Beanie hasn’t lost her appetite. While we were talking to the surgeon one of the little bits of plastic that had been retrieved from Beanie’s tummy fell out of the bag Paul was holding. There was a mad scramble as Paul, me and Beanie all dived for it at once. If it hadn’t been for the sedating effect of that pain killer I think Beanie might have reclaimed her prize!!

Incidently, I asked the surgeon which chew toys or bones he considered safest based upon his experiences of pulling foreign objects out of dog’s stomachs. He said that he thought both rawhide chews and certain raw bones are fine. The best bones are either big marrow bones or chicken wings and necks. The big bones are too hard and large to be swallowed and the chicken wings and necks will simply disolve in the dog’s stomach. So there you go – the idea that chicken wings are a no-no for dogs is a myth. And they’re great for cleaning their teeth. Just make sure you feed them raw!

If you Google for even a short amount of time, you’ll find plenty of stories about the crazy things dogs have eaten and either passed with some difficulty, or had to have removed surgically. Little Beanie’s a chewaholic, no doubt about that, but she’s always been more into the destructive side of chewing rather than the swallowing. It’s now apparent that has changed, possibly due to the competition for chewables presented by her little brother Biggles. Or maybe she’s from a line of Beagles owned by a certain crazy Frenchman with an unconventional appetite, and her heritage is only now asserting itself. But I’m getting ahead of myself; here’s the whole story.

About a week ago, I spotted Beanie chewing what appeared to be a bit of a “dead” ball in the park. Verbal commands won’t do a thing when she’s got something in her mouth, but she’s very obliging about letting my fingers probe around inside there (she should be, it’s a very regular occurrence), so I kept quiet and headed over to her to extract the object. However, before I reached her she mugged someone for a treat and whatever had been in her mouth wasn’t there any more. I wasn’t too concerned. I figured she’d probably spat out the foreign object to make room for the treat, and even if she had swallowed, the item would have been small, well chewed and therefore likely to pass through without any problems.

The following night (or morning, because it was about 4am) we were woken abruptly by something. I couldn’t see anything in the darkness, but I could hear a repetitive pumping sound. I figured either someone had broken into our house with the express purpose of unblocking our sinks using a stout old fashioned plunger, or one of our dogs was about to be sick. Susan turned the light on, and instead of a masked superhero plumber (“My job here is done, but somewhere in the city a toilet is overflowing. To the Dynorod Van! Away!”) I saw Beanie regurtitating some floppy blue plastic. Fair enough – at least she’d thrown it up before it could do harm.

Unfortunately that wasn’t the end of it, and there was another vomiting session the next night that produced a bit more plastic and a trace amount of blood. We’ve got a history of being panic merchants where our dog’s health is concerned, and true to form we called the pet’s insurance help line, and visited the vet. As Beanie was otherwise in top form and making regular deposits in the Poo Bank (the only bank not threatened by the current global economic crisis) the advice was to monitor the situation for the next few days.

As it turned out, the vomiting recurred intermittently, so of course we returned to the vet. We knew the next course of action our vet would offer would be exploratory surgery, but Susan found a less invasive alternative – endoscopy, which was available at the Glasgow Vet College. We dropped her off there first thing this morning, and gave Biggles a little offlead park walk while we waited for news. I was confident the vet would find nothing, and we’d be taking our (temporarily) biggest pup back home cursing ourselves for over reacting yet again. There’d been no vomiting the last two nights, and even the folks at the vet college had felt that an endoscopy was probably unwarranted; they decided to go with an xray and ultrasound first.

This time however we’d been right to reach for the shiny red Bat-phone. The xray and ultrasound revealed a substantial amount of foreign material in Beanie’s stomach, and the endoscopy was back on. A little later, the endoscope found a lump of whitish material that it could not extract, and finally surgery retrieved a treasure trove of junk: six large pieces of grey guttering(!), assorted pieces of plastic, enough wool and fabric fragments to knit a jumper, and a cat’s claw.

Blimey. Where the hell did she get all this stuff? Especially the cat’s claw! When there’s a cat in the neighbourhood, Beanie much prefers to have any possibility of a confrontation spoiled by a stout garden fence. That way she can woof boldly without any fear of reprisals. I’m just hoping the vet will keep samples of Beanie’s non-degistibles so that we can work out where they came from, and prevent any further illict speed swallowing attempts.

Regardless, our pup is apparently recovering well from her op and we should get her back tomorrow. No doubt she’ll have to wear a lampshade for a few days to stop her messing with her stitches. I hope it’s a big one, otherwise she just might swallow it.

It was another big day for Biggles. His first day off-lead in the park.

Sunday will be his first introduction to the puppy field – Beanie’s regular haunt. He’ll meet his half-sister Bella and all of Beanie’s buddies. Although Beanie won’t be there this week for reasons we’ll explain later.

Today we settled for a little quiet area of the park just to see how he’d behave off-lead. Here’s a little video clip of the moment we first let Biggles off-lead:

That’s Beanie’s first coat he’s wearing. It looks more like a little waistcoat on Biggles – he needs a bigger size already!

Any more treats mum?

Making new friends

Testing out the sniffer

I wouldn’t mind another bit of that sardine cake!