A few weeks ago, a dog was brought in to see me looking extremely unwell. The poor pooch had vomited up a section of the owner’s tights a few days earlier, had been fine after this episode, but that morning had started vomiting again before promptly collapsing.

The clinical history was obviously quite suspicious, but before we operated on this very sick dog, we needed to know surgery was in the dog’s best interest.

Only certain objects will show up on x-rays and tights are certainly not one of them. Diagnosing an intestinal blockage is sometimes challenging in the absence of a very obvious bone or object that is visible on an x-ray. Sometimes you can feel a blockage by palpating the abdomen, but the stomach and upper intestines sit under the rib cage, which prevents being able to feel these organs, and in larger dogs it is difficult to feel as much anyway.

We had to risk an operation

I took a quick x-ray and although the stomach looked empty, I could see a build-up of gas in the small intestine that could indicate a blockage further along. We stabilised the dog with intravenous fluids and medication and decided that we had to risk an operation to discover the cause of the dog’s illness.

Sure enough, once I was able to operate I found another section of tights, but these had not only caused a blockage, they’d also resulted in an intussusception – where a section of the bowel gets trapped inside a neighbouring section of bowel. This section of trapped bowel was irreversibly damaged and explained why the dog had collapsed only a few hours earlier. After some tricky surgery to remove the dead bowel and a night in intensive care, the dog was looking much happier and enjoying a tasty breakfast of ‘gastrointestinal’ food.

Eating strange, inedible items is a very common cause of trips to vet clinics. For this dog the tights were not only indigestible but resulted in major surgery and a near death experience. Young dogs are more likely to eat silly things, so keep inedible items off the floor and washing in baskets whenever possible. Educate younger members of the household to keep an eye on socks and small toys, and give your pets safe alternative dog toys to play with instead.