Luca is a bouncy 9 month old golden Labrador who we could hardly recognize when she came into the clinic last week. She had been at the emergency after hours clinic for as she started vomiting on Friday night and then by Sunday was not eating and very depressed.

This is pretty alarming in Labradors as those who have one know they love their food so not eating needs to be taken seriously. Her owner also mentioned that she had a great love of eating socks and they had already seen 2 previous socks come out in her stool a few months ago.

She had blood tests taken which were pretty normal and then x-rays were taken of her abdomen which showed the food in her stomach from Friday was still in there! She was given pain relief and put on intravenous fluids as she was not drinking either and dehydration can quickly make animals feel miserable.

We admitted Luca on Monday morning and it was obvious something was seriously wrong, she had a high heart rate and a very painful abdomen and we decided that she needed to be opened up to find out what was in her stomach and causing the vomiting, anorexia, depression and pain.

Luca was anaesthetised and her belly was shaved and prepared for surgery. She had an operation called an exploratory laparotomy where all the organs in the abdomen are examined for abnormalities. We quickly realised that she had a string like object in her small intestine that extended up about 30 cm into her stomach. This is known as a linear foreign body and in worst cases the string can cut through the bowel causing perforation and the dogs die of peritonitis. The outflow of her stomach was blocked with a soft lumpy structure. This was obviously what was causing the problem. We opened up her stomach and found a balled up sock that had a torn thin part extending down into her intestine, we removed the larger part and then we were luckily able to pull the rest of the sock out without having to open up any other parts of her intestinal tract.

The stomach was stitched up and then her abdomen was flushed out with 3 litres of warm saline to help wash away any contamination. Her wounds were stitched up and she was put on strong pain relief and intravenous antibiotics.

Luca recovered well from her surgery and after another night at the emergency clinic she bounced in the next day and started eating small meals. She has gone from strength to strength, and these are the latest photos of her looking happy and well again. We encouraged the owner to keep all socks out of reach now!