Great Dane Eats 43.5 Socks and Lives to Bark About It

An Oregon family is probably being a whole lot more careful about where they leave their socks.

After their 3-year-old Great Dane began vomiting last February, they took him to DoveLewis Emergency Animal Hospital in Portland, where X-rays revealed the cause of the problem.

“We opened up his stomach and kept removing sock after sock of all different shapes and sizes,” Dr. Ashley Magee, a veterinary surgeon, told KGW.

The Great Dane had been brought to the vet previously for eating socks — but just one or two of them, not nearly four dozen.

“It could be an anxiety thing,” Dr. Magee told KGW. She explained that when dogs are left home alone, they may look for comfort in items with their owners’ scent — like smelly socks. “Dogs get nervous and their natural instinct is to chew,” she said.

The Great Dane (his name wasn’t mentioned, but I really hope it’s Socks) was released from the animal hospital the day after his surgery and is doing fine.

And now, more than six months later, he’s in the news as a winner of Veterinary Practice News’ 2014 They Ate WHAT? X-ray contest.

The annual contest, which is pretty self-explanatory, is sponsored by pet insurance provider Trupanion and provides cash awards “to support the uncompensated care these hospitals provide pets,” according to Veterinary Practice News.

DoveLewis Animal Hospital entered the Great Dane’s stomach X-ray in the contest this year, and it won the third-place $500 prize.

The second-place prize of $1,000 went to Gulf Breeze Animal Hospital in Florida, which also submitted an X-ray of a dog’s unusual stomach contents. In their case it was a shish kabab skewer that was somehow swallowed by a German Shorthaired Pointer named Marley. (Ouch!) The skewer was removed and Marley is doing fine.

The winner of the contest’s first-place, $1,500 prize was Paws & Claws Animal Hospital of Plano, Texas. Its entry was an X-ray of an exotic frog who swallowed 30 ornamental rocks.

Really? Sorry, but if I had been on the They Ate WHAT? judging panel, 43.5 socks would have definitely beat 30 ornamental rocks. WHAT?!

Photos via Facebook