A cautionary tale for anyone thinking of letting pets near the grill at a Fourth of July barbecue this weekend:
Late last November, Kevin O'Hern was cooking a few teriyaki-flavored shish kebabs for his family when his dog, Jax, got a hold of one and swallowed the whole thing – including the 6-in. wooden skewer.
Various members of the Minnesota household rushed to pull whatever they could out of the 1-year-old Siberian Husky's mouth, but by then, the kebab has made its way down Jax's throat. O'Hern assumed that the skewer stick would pass through Jax's system and be excreted, just as bones had in the past.
A few hours later, Jax began to yelp, but the cries soon subsided. Then, a few days later, the dog began to scream in pain. When O'Hern took Jax to the vet, X-rays didn't capture a stick in Jax's body, and the vet told the family that the pooch was likely dehydrated and had a cold. Days passed, and Jax continued to make pained cries.
"It was the most awful noise ever," says O'Hern's wife Diane. "He would scream like a person. He would be fine and just doing his thing, and then all of a sudden, he would turn the wrong way, it would poke him just the right way, and he would cry and cry."
Three vet visits and three X-rays still yielded no clues, and doctors finally suggested exploratory surgery on Jax's stomach. A month after he had swallowed his shish kebab, Jax went in for his procedure, and the doctor found that the shish kebab skewer had pierced straight through the dog's large intestine. "They were so surprised that not only did the skewer go through his large intestine, but fluid didn't seep out of it," Diane says. The hospital staff were amazed that Jax went for so long in relatively good condition, but it seems as though Jax isn't just any dog.
"They say they cannot believe it – he was eating two hours after his surgery," Diane says. "They don't know our Jax!"
The now 2-year-old pooch, who is just as cute and energetic as ever, has since been sprayed by a skunk and bitten by ticks and gotten Lyme disease, but he's a "survivor," according to Diane, who will never put a shish kebab near her beloved Jax again if she can help it.
"I told my husband, 'No shish kebabs or skewers of any nature allowed anywhere around him ever again!"
Read more tales of dogs and what they've swallowed on PEOPLEPets.com:
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