Is the fluff/filling in dog toys dangerous?

 

This is Heidi. Heidi is one of my Nellie's litter from last year. Heidi is just 10 months old and lucky to still be with us. Heidi's family entrusted Heidi to our family whilst they took a trip to Australia to snatch last hours with a poorly relative. They left two Sundays ago. Everything was good. I've walked with Heidi before and her recall is great but to be safe I kept her on her lead when we walked, I wasn't sure if the farm vehicles near us would spook her etc. She came into her first season 5 days after being with us - that's fine, I don't mind the mess, I have two MD girls already. She then had weepy eyes - maybe the dusty track?? not sure but I bathed them every few hours with salted warm water - that's fine I can deal with that. What I struggled with was the poor little pup being sick all night on the Monday, 8 days after arriving with us. On the afternoon of the Tuesday she was lethargic, still drinking water but sicking up more than she held down. At 5:55pm on the Tuesday I checked her gums - they were grey, she was majorly dehydrated so I rushed her to my vets at 6pm. By 7pm she had been CT scanned and X-rayed and they found a potential foreign body in her intestines - maybe a dry poo they said. So we were transferred to the emergency vets for overnight rehydration. She was now dangerously close to kidney failure. They operated on the wee soul and removed fluff - fluff from a dog toy. She has a laparoscopy scar stretching all the way up her tummy. She nearly never made it - the vets had to wait a day for her electrolyte levels to stabilise before they could operate - everything was so touch and go. Heidi is one resilient little girl, she made it and by Friday when I collected her she resumed normal service by duly humping Willow to remind everyone that her hormones were still raging and that she was alive and kicking. So the moral of the story is - you can turn you back and they can swallow a mouthful of fluff and the results are disastrous.

My advice - check for fluff...check their gums for signs of dehydration - the vet bill was in the region of £5k but losing her would have been worse.