The title says it all: my little monster has eaten a sanitary towel, plastic wrapper and all.
As soon as I realised, I called the vet. We've got an appointment in 2 hours for an examination and an ultrasound.
Given the size of the thing compared to my girl, and what it's made of, the vet surgery doesn't recommend waiting for it to pass like other small items might, and they want to examine her before advising on what to do.
So here I am, worried sick, just waiting for the appointment time to roll around. It happened during the night, so it's too late to induce vomiting. I'm not really sure what's going to happen next.
As for how on earth she got her paws on the pad, let's just say my sister will definitely be sleeping out on the porch tonight.
I'd be grateful for any info on pets swallowing similar objects, especially if you've got any reassuring stories!
Translated from French
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Right, thanks for the suggestion (definitely a good one!), but she’s actually mastered "drop it": I do swaps with her, specifically to get her to let go of something dangerous in exchange for a nice treat.
She’s also great at "leave it" – honestly, we’ve really put the work in to make sure she doesn’t get into too much mischief! When she was a puppy, she was obsessed with stones (she even had a "pet" stone she dragged everywhere) and we were terrified she’d swallow one, so we worked really hard on that.
Unfortunately, that only works if I catch her in the act; when I’m asleep, it’s a completely different story!
I’m not a fan of R- (negative reinforcement), especially with my girl, as she’s far too anxious for that kind of method to be right for her. And until we had to take in my sister—who’s basically walking chaos—we never had any issues like this. As my mum says, "People who have their things stolen by the dog are the ones who don’t put their things away."
On the other hand, I might need to do some more training sessions with my sister: I wonder if some dried chicken would be a good incentive to get her to tidy up...?
I might consider using a bit of an air spray on my sister... or maybe just the "right then, here’s the bill for the thing you left lying around" technique!
Hi there,
Your Minnie was certainly very lucky in that little mishap of hers...
What would you say to teaching her how to avoid certain objects or food, using the "leave it" command? You could do this through some training sessions.
Mind you, you can't really do that with your sister ;-) only joking...
Or, if you want a quick fix (while Minnie still remembers that nasty episode), you could put a towel back on the floor and encourage her to move away using a puff of air...
https://www.petsathome.com/shop/en/pets/pet-corrector-holistic-dog-training-spray-50ml
Afterwards, you can work on training her with "leave it" and "drop it..."
This one's going down in the annals of Wamiz 😈
Bit of a Freudian slip there! 😁
I went through the same thing with a baby nappy. My dog had raided the bin and wolfed down the whole inside of the nappy 😲
I called the vet and he told me to keep an eye on her. She was pooping out that absorbent stuff for 2 or 3 days... it was quite a sight!
Hope your girl is doing better 👌
Brilliant news for her! It can't be very pleasant, but if it saves her from going under the knife... This story will definitely go down in the history of this forum 😈
Well done for being so quick off the mark, and top marks to the vets! ✌
Goodness me, what an ordeal!
I’ve just come across this thread and read the whole thing – the suspense was unbearable...
You’ll have to keep a real hawk-eye on this little lady if she’s prone to swallowing everything she finds!
(It’s unlikely this incident will break the habit, mind you... My parents had a dog who used to gorge himself on plums that fell from the tree every summer, until the day he ended up with a bowel obstruction. The vet had to manually clear the blockage of stones. From that day on, he never went near a plum again; I still don't know how he managed to make the connection.)
