Don’t let your dogs eat tampons
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It’s a fact and its been confirmed: Do not let your dog eat your tampons ladies. It’s disgusting!
Last week I extracted a tampon from a dog’s small intestine. Really. But, to be honest, it was not the tampon that caused the bulk of the problem. The feminine hygiene product’s stringy supplement was mostly to blame, wreaking havoc in my patient’s circuitous digestive apparatus by way of its ability to effectively accordion her bowels.
Most people I know that hear this dog-meets-tampon story admit it’s not just horribly disgusting but totally entertaining, too. Gross-out humor is too darn popular these days. But it’s not just that. The fact that our patients will eat all kinds of random things is an endless source of amusement for us.
Sure, it’s not funny when we’re taking X-ray after X-ray trying to figure out whether there’s something in there or not. And it’s certainly not funny when we’re cutting multiple holes into their intestines in the process of getting random stuff out. But the strange truth is this: Veterinarians are often proud — way proud — of the fact that we can save our patients’ lives by extracting strange things from their guts.
I know, I know, it’s weird. But hey, it’s the God-honest truth. Why else would a leading veterinary trade magazine host an annual “What the heck did you find in Fido?” contest?
Though I can’t offer you a taste, seeing as this issue is not yet available online, let it suffice to say that all of the ten-plus entries listed in the article bested my tampon story to the extreme. (Here are the winners of 2009.)
For example, the winner ate ten handballs. As in, ten big black balls about the size of a smallish orange. They filled the stomach. And somehow didn’t cause too much of a problem — which is a shocking thing to consider. The runners-up? They ate sewing needles and Gorilla glue and baby toys and all kinds of things you might consider horribly indigestible. None of them, however, consumed a tampon.
So how could a publication of such eminence neglect such an obviously “interesting” example of a gastrointestinal foreign body?
Well … perhaps because tampon consumption is so damn common in dogs that no one cares to air such dirty laundry anymore. I mean, why bring that kind of gross-out stuff to the fore when there’s so much entertainment to be had with big black handballs?
Dr. Patty Khuly ( a person who cares about tampons and dogs)
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My basset hound got into the bathroom trash and ate and an unknown number of ahm… tampons. This was on Monday and all this week she has been lethargic, not eating and barley drinking. Finally today (Thursday) she threw up 3 of them outside. By the time I got some plastic bags to pick them up, the dumb dog ate them again.
Did a quick search and read to give them 1 tbsp of peroxide per 10 pounds of dog. I put it in a empty water bottle and poured it down her throat. She started sputtering and about a minute later she threw up a pile of 11 of them!! I wish that I would have done this days ago, the poor thing.
Lesson: throw those things in a small trash can under the sink with a door. And if she ever does it again, induce vomiting right away…
Our bulldog ate a tampon years ago and it damn near killed him. Good article.