For some unknown reason, five dogs of the MacDuff clan have eaten Christmas ornament hooks and Wen has the x-rays to prove it!
Years ago, Casey, Buffy, and Poo were left in the basement for several hours while Wen was running errands and when she returned, she found that they had gotten into a box of Christmas ornaments and chewed up the contents. After finding some chewed up pieces of wire, Wen was suspicious and she took all three dogs to the animal hospital where she worked and took x-rays of them.
Metal shows up very clearly on x-rays and it was obvious that all three dogs had swallowed multiple ornament hooks, much to Wen’s dismay!
Fortunately for everyone, all three dogs were able to pass the hooks after being fed lots of bread and extra dog food so no surgeries were needed to remove them. An “all clear” was pronounced after a later set of x-rays was taken.
Ever since that incident, Wen has been extra careful when she decorates Christmas trees and she keeps a close eye on her ornament hook supply. Things do happen, however, and sometimes ornaments get knocked off the tree when dogs with wagging tails walk by.
On two other occasions, Wen has found ornaments lying on the floor by the Christmas tree with no hooks attached and she has ended up taking x-rays, only to find that both Duffy and Corky had eaten ornament hooks. Again, both times they were able to pass them, but the hooks have remained an issue over the years.
It seems as though the wire hooks don’t break into pieces when they are chewed, but they are soft enough to chew into gnarly shapes and anything chewy is enticing to dogs.
Just last year, Molly was chewing on an ornament hook that she must have found in the carpet and Wen was able to snatch it away before she could swallow it.
Those hooks will probably always be a problem as long as Wen has dogs and she continues to decorate for Christmas, but at least she is aware that she probably hasn’t seen the last of the hook chewers and she keeps an eagle eye out for stray hooks. As an extra precaution, she has thrown away all of the older plain wire hooks and replaced them with softer plastic-coated ones.
Who would have thought that tiny little pieces of wire could end up being Scottie snacks and become such a big issue?!
The Wiry Culprits
