How a $5.00 Toy Equals an $800 Bill

Sophia Yin, DVM San Francisco Chronicle

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You've probably heard that medical students are hypochondriacs. Well veterinary students have a similar malady but their anxiety is over their pet's health. I guess I never really outgrew this trait because last Wednesday, when my dog Rudy vomited his entire breakfast and then dinner, I thought for sure he had stomach cancer. And if not that, maybe he had liver or kidney disease or one of the myriad other fatal diseases associated with vomiting. While Rudy acts like an eager adolescent, at eleven years, he's entering his twilight which means he's fair game for any disease associated with later life.

Of course cancer and organ failure weren't really my number one guesses. They were just my most tragic guesses. With his history of good health, Rudy's gastrointestinal grief was more likely due to something simpler. Maybe he secretly found and ate a bone that got stuck or a food item that was disagreeable. Or maybe it was his stuffed rabbit toy. The one that he periodically disembowels by ripping out the polyester filling. He's never eaten the material but there's always a first time.

Even though Rudy didn't look fatally ill, I couldn't help worrying. Things can go downhill in a flash in cases of vomiting. One day your dog's his normal happy-go-lucky self. He's just vomiting a little bit. The next day that foreign object that didn't show up on x-rays has punctured through his stomach and he's in full blown system-wide bacterial infection leading to shut down of his entire organ system.

So the next day, after he'd chucked up another meal and looked a little down, I took him to the UC Davis Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital. Yeah, I know I'm a veterinarian so I should treat him myself, but when it's your own pet, everything gets confusing. Plus the veterinary school is close to home, has all of the diagnostic and treatment capabilities known to dogkind, and can provide twenty four hour critical care.

In short, after several days of gastric rest and intravenous fluids, plus numerous radiographs, ultrasounds and blood samples, Rudy was as good as new minus a few pounds. He was also minus a one inch fragment of a choo hoof dog treat that he'd passed in his stool. The non-digestible remnant that he'd hidden from me weeks ago had partially blocked food from getting out of his stomach and then had scraped along his stomach and intestines on its way down the alimentary canal.

The piece hadn't shown up on any of his tests, so the cause of the problem and therefore the knowledge of how to prevent future illness, had alluded us until we saw that fateful feces. The diagnostics had told us that he was cancer free, didn't need surgery, and that his intestinal tract was recovering with the therapy though.

While dogs that munch on choo hooves and other objects such as bones and rawhides won't always develop problems, it's all a game of chance. An $8.00 gamble can easily lead to an $800.00 bill. But that doesn't mean you have to remove all forms of chewing from your dog's list of entertainment. Here's how you can stack the odds in your pet's favor.

Stuffed toys: If your dog is the type that loves his stuffed toys so much that he eats them, then get him different toys.
Rawhide bones: Raw hides are good for dogs that work them into bitty pieces, but dogs who swallow the whole thing are asking for trouble. Remove the rawhide before it gets soft enough and small enough to swallow, because in spite of it's it can get stuck and stay stuck anywhere in the digestive tract.
Choo hooves: Choo hooves are hard so dogs usually don't break off large fragments, but it's important to find and remove the treat once it gets anywhere close to swallowing size. Also, if your dog is a hard chewer, you may elect to avoid the hooves altogether as he can fracture his tooth.
Bones: Bones that don't fragment and that are so large they can't be swallowed are safe. Bones that can be broken and eaten in small pieces can be a problem. Some pieces are just large enough to swallow but too large to make it through the esophagus, stomach or intestines without temporarily or permanently getting stuck. Other pieces are small enough but have painful sharp edges that can impale the digestive tract walls. Both raw and cooked bones can fragment like so and even soft bones such as fish bones can cause serious distress. Lastly, even bones crunched thoroughly can cause disaster when the bits accumulate in the colon forming in indissolvable concretion.

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© 2000 Sophia Yin, DVM No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission from Sophia Yin.
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