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A mischief-maker dog called Denver – who likes chewing the cardboard from loo rolls – had a brush with disaster when he wolfed down fish bones he scavenged at the beach.
Adorable sprocker spaniel Denver swallowed the sharp bones when his owner Samantha Wilkie had her back turned for just a couple of seconds.
The bones lodged in his tummy and wouldn’t budge – leaving food-obsessed Denver, who has had a string of mishaps, at risk of a perforated colon and toxic shock.
Samantha, from Worthing, West Sussex, rushed him to the Vets Now emergency clinic in the seaside town.
Our team put Denver, who was diagnosed with epilepsy last year after having two seizures, onto a drip to stop him getting dehydrated.
And they administered laxatives to get his bowel to move – but the bones were lodged tight, leaving five-and-a-half-year-old Denver increasingly anxious and distressed.
Keen if possible to avoid potentially risky surgery, our team then carried out a series of x-rays to establish the size of the blockage in Denver’s tummy.
Then Denver was sedated and given stronger laxatives – which finally succeeded in clearing his clogged intestines of a large amount of fish vertebrae.
And just 48 hours later live-wire Denver was back to his normal irrepressible self – chasing around Samantha’s house trying to seeking out loo roll tubes to chew.
Samantha said: “Denver has become ravenously hungry all the time – it’s a side effect of the medication he’s been taking for his epilepsy.
“Anything at all he can scavenge he’s in at straight away – including, for some strange reason, the inside tubes from toilet rolls.
“With the fish bone incident, we were at Worthing beach for our usual walk and he literally bit off more than he could chew.
“He started chewing a lump of compacted fish bones and then spat it straight back out – but what we didn’t realise was that he’d somehow managed to swallow some of it as well.
“He was okay to start with – and he did manage to go to the loo the next morning.
“But after that his tummy just completely seized up and he was in the garden whimpering, which is not like him at all and that’s when we realised we needed to get him seen straightaway.
“The team at Vets Now were incredibly kind and patient.
“Obviously I was very anxious for Denver, he’s part of my family and the clinic staff looked after me as well as him.
“Denver’s been in a lot of scrapes over the years.
“So, I’m very much hoping that this will be the very last time for quite a while that we have him at the vets!”
Our vet nurse Amy Webster said: “Denver was very brave, and our team were able to unblock him without sedation. We’re delighted he’s made a full recovery and is back to his normal self.
“Samantha did absolutely the right thing bringing him and was incredibly patient, understanding and calm throughout the whole procedure. Clogged intestines can have really serious and – sometimes – fatal consequences for a dog.
“Fish bones can be particularly sharp – much shaper, for example, than a cattle bone – and that leads to a much higher risk of essential organs being punctured.”
Our Worthing clinic is one of our nationwide chain of clinics and hospitals open seven days a week for pet emergencies.