Dog-gone Socks!

A family in Portland, Oregon was having some strange problems earlier this year. First, their socks disappeared. Then, shortly afterward, one of their dogs, a three-year-old Great Dane, fell ill for no apparent reason, vomiting and looking very distressed. The family decided to take him to an animal hospital nearby, where he was examined and found to have a severely distended stomach. The vets took an X-ray and were very surprised - it almost looked like the dog had eaten the family’s laundry! Dr. Ashley Magee performed exploratory surgery on him and found where the family’s missing socks had gone. The Great Dane had eaten a total of 43 ½ socks. “We opened up his stomach and kept taking out sock after sock of all different shapes and sizes,” Dr. Magee said. With the socks gone, the dog felt fine and was released from the hospital the next day.
But that isn’t the end of the story. The Veterinary Practice News magazine sponsors an annual contest titled “They Ate WHAT?” Animal hospitals from across America send in X-ray photos of their patients who eat inedible objects. The sock-eating Great Dane was entered and took third place, winning $500 for the hospital that treated him. He lost to another dog that swallowed a metal shish kebab skewer and a frog that ate more than thirty rocks from the bottom of its cage! 

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