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Does anyone have any experience of their dog eating fabric?

I am re-upholstering a chair at the moment, so there are lots of little bits of fabric around. I have been as careful as I can be with not leaving them lying around, but last night my dog ate a little bit of the fabric about the size of 1 or 2 50p pieces.

She is only a little dog, 8 months old and about the size of a large cat. I am really worried about what the fabric might do to her digestive system - like getting stuck or something - or worse, how on earth it would come out the other end?

Has this happened to anyone else before, or should I be running to the vets do you think?

Should say she hasn't shown any signs of being ill yet, and was chasing the chooks around this morning with gusto

You could have given her a couple of teaspoons of hydrogen peroxide to get her to vomit the fabric up, but I think your best bet would be to keep a close eye on her when she goes to relieve herself and gets it out of her system that way.

Our dog regularly eats the red nets meat comes in, they do pass without issue.(we don't feed them but she scabs the bins)
I wouldn't worry. But then I am not a Vet.

our dog eats whole tea towels, socks and underware. they allways pass out the other end. dont worry about it.

Hehe whole socks! Flipping heck!

I know that they do eat all sorts...it was just that she is very small and the fabric was relatively big. But thanks, I do feel better about it. Will accompany her next time she goes to 'be clean' and see what happens!

it will probably take 24 hours to come out the other end

Ours ate an entire block of homemade pate once! It was wrapped up in about 5 layers of cling film. The cling film came out the other end about 24 hours later. (The pate wasn't still inside!)

My cats do this as well. The favourite is the string that goes around a joint of meat. It can be really worrying seeing this long red 'worm' appear in the litter tray a day or two later.

What sort of fabric was it? If it was wool, it'll probably pass straight through, a cotton might disintegrate a bit in the stomach acid, whereas a man-made fabric might give up the ghost and dissolve completely and you may not notice it. Keep an eye on her, if she goes off her food or lies down and starts moaning then it might have clogged up her bowels, if she's 'going' normally, she's probably ok.

Fingers crossed for her.

Zoe

Thanks Zoe, it was heavy duty upholstery fabric, so I think it will probably survive in one piece. Delightful.

Clanpowell, had to laugh. Dogs just aren't like cats are they? Nowhere near as much sense!

Keep an eye on her but as others have implied, dogs have pretty robust constitutions.

Ours is quite partial to a tea towel now and again too!

I had a dog that ate a packet of chubby crayons, a pack of cotton wool balls and my best knickers!

Haha! All in one sitting Milims?

This whole thread is very , if a bit as well!

I don't think you have to worry too much about fabric the size of a 50p piece, Bonnie!

our privious dog ate batteries on several occations and a thermomiter and had to get his stomach pumped.
hes also eat a whole list of other non food items which were less poisonous.

all our dogs have been bin radders and consumed lots of things there not supposed to.
no harm ever came to them from it.

Milims wrote:I had a dog that ate a packet of chubby crayons, a pack of cotton wool balls and my best knickers!

Thankfully not Bonnie, but in a fairly short space of time! So we had multicouloured poo, wipeyourbumonthewayout poo and OMGdidyoureallydothatIhateyoudog poo on three separate occasions
Oh - and, by the way, he lived until he was about 20!