By Dr. Daniel Eubanks
Every year as veterinarians migrate to various continuing education conferences across the country, one consistent event is the boring lunchtime discussion. Not infrequently, the topic digresses to which one of us surgically removed the most bizarre foreign object from the stomach of one of our patients.
All veterinarians have an extensive mental diary of these treasures, which we have found and I’m no exception. I’d like to share some of my trophies with you because they are amazing and sometimes amusing. But also because they can be dangerously serious and might be avoided with your awareness.
Fact: dogs, and less so cats, will eat anything. Anything! It doesn’t have to taste good, smell good or even look good! Some of these edible inedibles are so unpredictable that you couldn’t possibly protect your pet from them by avoidance or removal. Some of them, however, we actually offer to our pets, not knowing their potential danger!
Let’s start with the “no-nos” that we consciously give to our pets.
The concept that dogs and cats can digest bones is an erroneous myth. They must pass the bone fragments in exactly the same shape and size as they were when ingested. Dogs are more at risk than cats because they will ingest large chunks of real bone. The general rule of thumb is that any bone which they can chew-up and swallow should not be given.
Some bones are worse than others. Chicken and rib bones are the worst, but marrow bones (sirloin) and soup bones (knuckles) are also potential trouble. The best-case scenario is a little vomiting and/or diarrhea if the bone has been gnawed and chewed into very small fragments. Larger pieces, especially sharp or irregular fragments, must be passed unaltered – exactly as they were when ingested. These larger, sharper pieces frequently cause intestinal blockage or perforation. Many dogs have died or nearly died from eating bones.
Some seemingly innocuous items can be very dangerous. Corncobs are as bad or worse than bones. Dogs tend to ingest large chunks of corncob simply “because they can” and corncob does not breakdown. It also must pass exactly as is and frequently causes obstruction.
Any linear filament (string, yarn, twine, dental floss, nylon, plastic) can cause serious trouble, especially with cats. Animals start to play with one end of the string, start to swallow that end and don’t/can’t stop until they’ve reached the other end. It’s like “sucking-in” a linguini noodle. Once inside, however, if the string is being passed in linear fashion (rather than being wadded into a clump) it can act like the wire on a cheese cutter. It can cut through the intestinal wall in multiple locations.
Cats’ toys attached to string should be played with only under supervision and never left lying around. Many cats have died from ingestion of a seemingly harmless 12-inch length of string.
Some items that dogs try to ingest are even more unimaginable. I once got a call in the wee hours of the morning from someone who reported that he was playing ball with his dog and now the dog had the ball “stuck on the tip of his tongue.” My first two thoughts were “had he been drinking” and “what was he doing playing ball with his dog at 4 a.m.?” My reply was “Well, pull it off!” He said he had tried that and it wouldn’t come off. Reluctantly I agreed to meet him at my office, although I admit I really did want to see this hallucination.
Well, the owner presented one of the most bizarre sights I’ve ever seen — especially at 4:30 a.m. There stood his dog happily wagging his tail and panting with a 2½-inch red rubber ball conspicuously attached to the tip of his tongue. It was one of those hard, hollow rubber ball dog toys with a ½-inch hole through which a jingle bell had been inserted into the hollow of the ball. Apparently while chewing and compressing the ball he had created a vacuum inside which sucked the tip of his tongue into the hole. Once inside, the strangulated blood supply caused the tip of the tongue to swell so that it could no longer fit back out through the hole.
We had to anesthetize Rover in order to cut the ball off of his tongue.
Similarly, I’ve had to do the same thing to dogs with an entire tin can stuck on their tongues. Picture a soup can with the lid partially attached like a hinge due to incomplete removal, and pushed inward toward the interior of the can. The dog inserts his tongue past the lid into the can to savor its contents, but the lid then acts like a one way valve and the tongue can’t get back out. Needless to say, this could easily sever the tongue and cause significant hemorrhage.
The list of unpredictable inedibles goes on and on. We’ve seen a dog ingest his own chain choker collar complete with a cluster of license and rabies tags. This collar was large enough to restrain Hannibal Lechter and the dog swallowed the entire thing whole!
One year a black lab had surgery to remove one of his master’s socks from his intestines. The next year we had to induce vomiting in the same dog to retrieve one of his mistress’s more personal undergarments.
We’ve seen stomachs full of driveway stones and stomachs full of decorative patio gravel. I’ve removed steel wool pads, tampons, fishing line and a baby bottle nipple.
The point is that although man’s best friend is truly a wonderful companion and I can’t imagine life without them, our pets are not rocket scientists and they’ll eat anything!
Use caution, common sense and forethought when giving your pet toys and treats. And watch out for what you leave just lying around the house. Your pet might consume it. And your vet might be the first to discover it!

