Would you like Bacon with that?

A few months ago I was greeted on my way to work with the following text message "Penny keeps vomiting and it contains gravel..........do you think I should take an xray?" Penny is an energetic Chocolate Lab owned by one of the technicians at work. As all labs do, Penny likes to get into trouble and on this particular day got herself into a LOT of trouble. I chuckled a little to myself before responding and letting my technician know to go ahead and get some xrays and I was on my way in.

I don't think either myself or my technician expected to see that on the xrays. That is a perfectly sculpted stomach full of gravel. I mean FULL. No room for anything else. Nothing was getting into that thing - nothing, nada, zilch. Do not pass go...do not collect $200. We put poor Penny on some fluids to see if we could make any headway on things ( I have seen gravel move through with just some IV fluids to help) but after a few hours nothing had changed. Poor Penny was destined to have a zipper installed on her belly (ie surgery time).

When it was all said and done I think we removed around 4 lbs of pea gravel from Penny's stomach (including the amounts she vomited before surgery and passed in her stool later on that day). Penny continued to pass some small amounts of gravel for a few days but by the next week was back to her normal labrador self.

I'm sure you are wondering why this sweet girl decided to take part in an all-you-can-eat gravel fest? A poor innocent family member who shall remain nameless emptied a container of bacon grease out the back door onto the pea gravel earlier that fateful day. Without thinking about it a few hours later, Penny was allowed to go out in the yard to do her thing. When she remained out there for a while, no one really thought much of it until.....well you know the rest. No dog can turn down bacon flavored gravel.  I think Penny learned her lesson and will stick to plain bacon from now on.