If you are a dog or even a cat owner, most likely you have come upon your pet eating something it definitely should not be eating. With our three dogs, and even more so with our first Pomeranian, Samara, there have been times over the years when we have caught them with something completely unedible in their mouths. One time Sammy got into a tied-up trash bag, that was ready to go to the dump, and ripped it open to consume the rancid beef suet we were throwing out. Just the thought of it makes me gag, and that was about 15 years ago! She was notorious for getting into the trash baskets around the house, pulling out used kleenex and tearing them to shreds, leaving a scattered mess all over the floors. When she was a puppy, and we did not know any better and left far too many 'things' within her reach, she got hold of a beautiful gold cross pen that Jim had just bought me and left a series of teeth marks all over it. She also destroyed many pairs of my underwear (that's right, mostly my stuff) and a variety of other items. When we got Meko, Sammy tried to teach her the fun of getting into the trash but Meko never grew as tall as Sammy so was unable to get into the trash quite as easily.
And of course, I can't even imagine the amount of money we've spent on stuffed toys that end up chewed, ripped, destroyed with all of the contents pulled out and either ingested or found in clumps around the house. I'm pretty sure my dogs aren't the only dogs who destroy stuffed animals in this way, which makes me wonder, why don't they stuff these things with something that is actually edible instead of something with a warning label that says 'poisonous if eaten' on it?
Jacquay enjoys pulling trash out of the buckets from time to time, especially if that long nose of hers smells something she just can't resist. I have learned not to throw any wrapper that once had food in it, even if there is no sign of food in the wrapper, into the trash buckets we have around the house and that she can reach.
Living rurally now, it troubles me when we take them for walks and they find something on the ground, grab it, and chew and swallow it before I get a chance to stick my fingers into their mouths to try to take it out. I will occasionally watch them as they wander around our front yard when I've put them out to do their business, but instead they find something that smells just too good to pass up and into the mouth it goes. I make a mad dash to try to stop the putrid-smelling item from entering their intestinal tract. Often though, if they don't get a chance to swallow the unknown bacteria-laden pod, they will quickly drop and roll in it, determined to get the smell somewhere either in or on their bodies.
So far, none of them has gotten too ill from eating anything, except the time Sammy swallowed a piece of bone that got stuck in her esophagus that the hospital had to cut out of her... but that's another story!