What should you do if your dog ate a pork bone?

Answer 1

Your dog should just be fine. If it was chicken bones or small bones then keep an eye on their stool and their moods and if you find your dog is distressed and not having a stool or has a tummy ache (stomach would be rigid and the dog would slink around the house) then see your vet.

I get good bones with lots of marrow and cook them (they are large bones) and give them to my dogs once a month.

My experience

My dog ate a small chicken wing bone, the flipper part, at around 8:30 on a Wednesday night. Almost immediately she started cough and hack as if the chicken got caught in her throat. This continued this on and off for a few hours. At around 11:30 she now had worked herself into a pant and was having labored breathing. She really started to look bad, her eyes became slits and she was kind of listless. At this point we decided to go to the 24 hour Pet ER.

At the Pet ER the vet began to ask all the normal questions about health history, vaccinations, etc. Then said she did a neck and Chess X-ray to look for the obstruction. She also wanted to do a blood test for heartworm and a white blood cell count test. When the X-rays came back she could not see any bone particles, and although the dog continued to cough and hack every few minutes, she continued to talk about the lung blood vessels showing signs of being an older dog. The she let us know that she was not equipped to look down the dogs throat with a scope and that would have to be done by a specialist and he would not get to her until a day or two. If we left her there she would need a $1,000 deposit that did not include the procedure to be done. We decided to wait until the next day and go to our current vet instead of having her sitting in a cage at the ER for who knows how long. The Pet ER vet gave us pills that are used for Asthma to help with the labored breathing, an antibiotic, and a pill to reduce inflammation and a copy of our two X-rays. Total bill $502.

The next morning, Thursday, we were off to see our family vet. Armed with our X-rays and info from the ER, the vet reviewed them, ordered a full blood test and looked over the history and our X-rays. The blood test was normal except for high Calcium. The vet on staff was not able to do a scope down the throat because he had not received the training needed to do that and told us we needed to come back and see another vet in the office if things did not clear up on their own tomorrow. Total bill $315

The dogs condition now was that the heavy and labored breathing had stopped, but the gag and cough occurred every time she stood up from laying down and every hour or so she would hack every hard. She did not ever vomit. She continued to eat and drink normally. But she could not bring up whatever was in her throat.

Friday morning now, a call to our vet revealed that she could be seen Saturday morning at 8:30 for consultation with the vet who was trained on the scope tool. But because of his schedule she most likely will have to wait for the operation and extraction another day.

We decided again to look around for another vet who could do it sooner because of the obvious discomfort in her and now we were worried about infection. At 3:00 Friday afternoon we saw another vet at a different ER and he went over all the paper work and X-rays and then said that after seeing the results of the blood test with the high Calcium that he was more concerned about the Calcium level than the object in the dog's throat. He talked about cancer and other bad things that cause high Calcium and was afraid to sedate her with the high Calcium count. So he ordered another blood test to check the Calcium. Sure enough the test came back negative and after testing it again on another machine, it turned up normal. At this point I was really to ring his neck for scaring us badly about cancer and other bad things. Next he did three of his own x-rays and remarked that he could not see anything better than the earlier X-rays. One of the X-rays was a big blur that showed nothing. He than said he want to start intravenous fluids and that he decided in a few hours if he could complete scooping for the object. At this point I called my own vet who said I could bring her in Saturday morning and maybe he could do a light sedation and reach in to see if he could find anything. So we left with the dog from this ER with no more understanding of the problem and another bill for $315. And he forgot to give us back our meditation that the dog was taking.

So it is Friday night , we have spent $1,132. We no longer have our medication, We still do not know if tomorrow the vet is going to operate or just consult with us. The poor dog is now hacking and gagging harder and louder now than ever.

Saturday, we are off for our 8:30 appointment armed with 5 X-rays, four blood test, all the records. This time we found a vet who listened. He put her to sleep, scoped down her throat all the way to her stomach. Whatever was in her throat was now gone. But her throat was swollen, one vocal chord was swollen so bad it was out of its slot. He gave us Hydrocodone to suppress her coughing and hacking and antibiotic. It stopped the hacking immediately and the dog could finally relax and sleep after three days of hacking. She will be on the Hydrocodone for five days and the antibiotic for ten days. This will give the swelling time to go down. Hopefully after that, the incident will be over. Cost for the scoping and drugs - $750 and worth every penny. I wish they had done this at the first three vet visits!

Answer 2

Your dog may be fine, but I would take your dog to the vet just in case. Depending on the size of the bone, the size of your and your dog's digestive system, it may do some serious damage.

Answer 3

look into your dogs mouth and try to grab it with either your hand our tweezer.

Answer 4

none i dont think its bad