Gorgeous labrador ‘Hudson’ came into the clinic on Tuesday after escaping home for over an hour! His owner noticed on his return that he was vomiting, seemed a bit restless and wasn’t eating his favourite food (very unusual for a labrador!).
At first we tried to make him vomit to remove whatever was in his tummy, but nothing came up. His stomach on palpation felt very distended and firm. A radiograph of his abdomen revealed a surprisingly large amount of pellet-shaped material sitting in his stomach.
The decision was made to prep Hudson for immediate surgery. The sheer amount of material in his stomach meant that it could potentially twist on itself or even rupture. We were concerned that it may have been an insecticide or poison he had eaten, both very dangerous materials for a dog to ingest.
We performed an exploratory laparotomy to remove the contents of his stomach, which revealed he had eaten a whole lot of dynamic lifter fertiliser! 2.2kg of it to be exact!
Hudson recovered really well and went home today. In the picture above, Hudson is featured with Dr. Nicola who performed the surgery.
We wish Hudson all the best as he continues to recover at home 🙂