Tough bill to swallow as dog eats rubber duck

When Libby Burgwin's dog, TJ, became seriously unwell, vets initially could not work out what was wrong.

After weeks of being off his food, the nine-year-old French Bulldog began being sick and had laboured breathing, eventually being diagnosed with aspiration pneumonia due to him inhaling his own vomit.

TJ was taken for scans, with the Burgwins from Telford, desperately hoping to get some answers.

The last thing they expected was to see the outline of a rubber duck inside his stomach. Being landed with a £3,500 bill later to cover the cost of its removal was also a bit of a surprise - glad though they are to have full insurance for TJ.

"We had a call, so we panicked because we thought something had gone wrong," said Burgwin, who only had to pay the first 10% of the bill.

"They were like: 'We've done one X-ray, because of his shape we can see everything inside of him - have you got any rubber ducks missing at home?'"

"Inside the X-ray you can see really clearly a rubber duck shape in his stomach, which was just crazy."

His owner said TJ had a penchant for carrying rubber ducks around in his mouth, but had never eaten one before.

"He has always been a fiend for stealing things that he shouldn't steal," Burgwin told the BBC.

"No bite marks, nothing, just swallowed it whole. It was unreal."

An operation saw the toy removed, which vets believed had been inside TJ's stomach for several weeks due to its appearance.

"I brought one from the pack because he had a few others at home, and the one in the pack was palm-sized, bright yellow, rubbery feeling."

"The one that came out was 50 pence piece-sized, black, and rock hard - [the vet] knocked it on the table and it was rock solid.

"They said that was the weirdest thing they've ever found inside of a dog."

TJ is now back at home, having made a full recovery.

"There was lots of medications, four medications every couple of hours that we were having to give him, but we've got really good at giving pills to a dog now," said Burgwin.

The family home is now bare of rubber ducks - apart from two.

"We have each kept one as a memory of the event, so that's on my desk, but no, he's no longer having any rubber ducks," she said.

"He's no longer got any toys that are any smaller than him, to be honest.

"We've taken all of them off of him."

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