Puppy swallows steak knife - and survives

A six-month-old Staffordshire Bull-Terrier named Lexi had an incredible close call recently when she swallowed a steak knife.

Staff at Sydney’s Animal Referral Hospital say the pup ’came within millimetres of death’ after swallowing the 20cm serrated knife.

Her owner brought her to their local vet, thinking she had an upset stomach that was causing her to vomit but when the x-rays came back, they were in for a shock.

"I thought she was going to die. Our vet said to rush her straight to the Animal Referral Hospital and they were amazing," she said.

ARH medical specialist Dr Jody Braddock and her team immediately began to operate on Lexi and spent 45 minutes carefully inching the knife back up Lexi’s oesophagus.

"I’ve never seen anything like it." Dr Braddock said. "We knew that Lexi’s best chance for survival would be to remove the knife as soon as possible before it could cause more damage".

The dog spent three days in intensive care and will be monitored for the next ten days but, amazingly, is expected to make a full recovery.

As to why and how Lexi swallowed the knife, her owner isn’t sure.

"Lexi’s always grabbing things to hide under the couch and play with them when we’re not looking - so that’s the only thing we can think of," she said

Dr Christine Hawke, ARH’s veterinary dentist thinks there may be another reason, however:

"I noticed from the vision immediately that Lexi had a mal-occlusion, which is a common condition in some breeds where the dog has a sore mouth because their teeth push into their gum…and to stop the pain they’ll often bite on something hard, although on this occasion Lexi definitely bit off more than she could chew."

Either way, we’re just glad she’s ok!

H/T: BreakingNews.ie