A couple nights ago, I awoke in the middle of the night to that one sound that no dog owner can ignore: that lurching sound of an impending vomit. I leapt out of bed and saw my younger dog, Woody, standing near my bed, trembling. He looked exactly like a toddler who woke up feeling crummy and sought out his mom so he could barf in front of her. Well, that’s exactly what he did do; he and my older dog Otto always sleep in the living room.
“Oh, puppy,” I said. “What happened?” I grabbed my phone and smashed buttons on it, trying to find the flashlight option through bleary eyes. I scanned the room with the light but couldn’t see any actual puddles of vomit, so I got up and walked him outside, in case he had to throw up some more. He walked out onto the lawn and peed, went to the outside water bucket and drank a little water, and then came back inside. No more trembling. He settled back onto the couch and I went back to bed.
In the morning, with clearer eyes, I found the vomit. It was, of course, on one of the only two rugs in the house, an antique Persian carpet runner in my bedroom. In the weak beam of my phone flashlight, I couldn’t differentiate between the pattern in the rug and the small (now mostly dried) puddle. There was some slimy stuff that was most certainly just digestive juices, bits of nearly digested kibble, and . . . a blob of something. I used some paper towel to pick it up, examining the blob closely.
A mystery from the depths…of Woody
At first I thought it was a piece of bone or glass, but it was soft, with rounded edges. It was rubbery – if not actual rubber. I took it to the kitchen sink and rinsed it off. It was for sure a hunk of something rubbery and opaque. I could make out some molded edges.
If this happened two or more years ago, I wouldn’t have even blinked. Woody chewed up lots of things when he was a puppy and adolescent dog, and he vomited up everything that was indigestible, usually within a day or two. I had a few surprises – as when he vomited up a piece of something I hadn’t even known was missing – but mostly I was able to say, “Ah, that’s a piece of that old Kong toy,” or “Finally, that chunk of the flying disk he ruined.”
But this time? He hasn’t chewed up anything for ages and ages. I can’t even remember the last time he chewed up a toy or a forbidden item. And I don’t at all recall any toy that we have ever had that was this particular color, a sort of a slightly translucent, light root-beer-bottle brown.
Could this thing have been in there for months or years? Is that even possible? Perhaps, once upon a time, it was colorful and had sharp edges from being chewed up, and it has lost color and gained smooth edges from marinating in digestive juices for years?
This was the theory proposed by my husband, anyway. “What are you talking about, he never chews up anything anymore?” he asked me, incredulous. “He chews up his Squeak balls all the time!”
On the hunt for damaged toys
That is not exactly correct. Both of my dogs like to chew on their favorite toy, the Planet Dog Squeak Ball, like they are chewing bubblegum. The Squeak appears to be the perfect texture, or offers the perfect amount of resistance for their jaws. But I don’t think either dog is exactly bent on destroying the Squeak balls; they just chew the balls so much, that eventually, the balls crack and start to fall apart. And when they start to fall apart, then one of the dogs (usually Otto) will lay down with the ball and chew it up into bits. It’s a process that takes months, but that goes fast at the end.
To test my husband’s theory, I hunted around the property, looking for all the Squeak balls in various stages of repair. I did actually find one that had a missing chunk that was vaguely the same shape as the perplexing lump from Woody’s midnight misadventure. But, no: It wasn’t a credible match. The baffling item is about twice as thick as the “walls” of the Squeak.
So the mystery lives on. What is that thing? How long has it been in there? Where did it come from? Is there more in there? I might never know.
Dogs!!
Looks like the heel of a shoe—flip flop maybe?
Oh, and a parting note. When it comes to dogs, there is no accounting for taste. Obviously they are not always discriminating about what they ingest.
As a vet tech, I have assisted in numerous surgeries to remove items causing an intestinal blockage. Some items will remain for long periods in the stomach for long periods of time, and others get blocked in the small intestine. When the get blocked the blood supply to that area gets cut off causing that area of intestine to die. Then the contents of the intestine (along with the intestinal bacteria) get released into the body cavity. Your dog will then become septic and probably will die shortly afterwards. Please don’t wait for your dog to vomit up a foreign object. If you suspect your dog has ingested a foreign object, please take them immediately to the veterinarian. A sure sign is if they continue to vomit and are not passing any stool. By the way, your foreign object looks like some sort of rubber stopper.
Saddle soap?? 🙂 That was a favourite in the barn!
Some years ago my dog started vomiting up small 1 inch brown squares. about10 or 12. Then she pooped out 2 or 3 more. We could not figure out what it was until I noticed my husband’s belt buckle on the coffee table. She had eaten the whole belt.
I too thought of a rubber heel.
One thing I found out a while ago (within the last 12 yrs) is the Kong toys are now made with a reactive dye so pieces show up on x-ray. Other brands might do so now.
In my mind’s eye, and maybe I’m crazy, but it almost looks like a rubber heel off a shoe of some sort. I have a cutie who eats worms, rocks, mulch, dirt, and yes, poop! Gross!! She also picked up a dead, I’ll say locust and started to happily chow down. So dogs are scavengers and learning to live with it. If they had human intelligence maybe they think twice.
Several years ago my male dog started vomiting. He vomited every hour on the hour, it seemed, starting at 6:00 am on a Sunday morning, and obviously wasn’t felling well. Of course this was a weekend, I was broke, and the emergency vet was very busy (and this is a dog with behavioral issues who is very difficult at the vet). I decided to take him to my regular vet the next day instead of waiting at the emergency vet. He continued vomiting every hour for the rest of the day. Exactly 24hours after the vomiting started, he vomited up about a two inch long by 3/4 inch thick piece of a braided fleece dog toy that had been destroyed months earlier and I had thrown all the pieces I could find away. I hadn’t seen a piece of that toy in months so I assume it had been in his stomach for at least a few months and he had shown no signs of feeling ill in all that time. I showed the vet and he said, “you are really lucky he brought that up on his own, otherwise you would have been paying for surgery.”
Another time my female puppy ran up a steep hill in my mom’s yard and when I went up to get her, I found her furiously gobbling some sort of spiny berry that had fallen from the tree. Of course she vomited soon after and, being a new dog owner, I was convinced the berries must have been toxic and rushed her to the emergency vet (the day after Christmas!). My puppy was fine but the vet told me that one time he saw a dog who wasn’t eating. No vomiting or diarrhea. The dogs stomach felt full and the dog didn’t seem in distress so he sent him home with orders for the owner to keep an eye on him. Next day owner brought the dog back for lethargy and still not eating. vet did an x-ray, stomach looked full. Decided to operate and ended up pulling out what looked like a plaster cast of the inside of the dog’s stomach. Showed it to dog’s owner and said, “what is this? I’ve never seen anything like it!” He said the owner took one look and said, “Oh, the dog got in the garage and I found a chewed up can of spray insulation but I didn’t think anything of it. He must have swallowed the spray foam insulation.” Vet said that was the weirdest thing he ever pulled out of a dog’s stomach.
Dogs swallow weird things.
Wow! Very lucky that the foam didn’t end your pups life. So happy she is ok🤗
I’m a veterinarian. A colleague and I once performed exploratory abdominal surgery on a French Bulldog that had been having chronic GI issues for several months. We found about a foot of rotten, stringy pull toy in his small intestine. The owner had had the dog only about six months, having adopted him from a rescue. She promised us that she had never given him any kind of toy or chewie like that since he lived with her. He survived the surgery, but lost about 18” of intestine. So….yes: I think foreign objects can be stay in the GI tract for several months!
The object looks like a fragment of one of the dental chews produced for dogs called “Greenies”. It might be possible
for such an item to be over-molded/heated or have contaminated ingredients that rendered it hard and indigestible.
It might be something given at the vet’s office during a visit. My vet has them for “treats”………