Cape Town - After treating several dogs with bones stuck in their mouth and throats at their hospital on Monday morning, the Animal Welfare Society of SA (AWS SA) urged pet owners to stop feeding their dogs bones.
Whether the bones were cooked or raw, they were all potentially dangerous for pets.
The organisation encouraged all pet owners to add “I will never feed my pets bones” to their list of New Year's resolutions.
“Our first patient, a distressed 12-year-old Husky cross named Darnell was admitted with a large chunk of stew bone painfully embedded in her lower jaw that hindered her ability to eat, drink or breath properly.
“Her owner attempted to pull the bone out but soon realised that he was ill-equipped for the task,” said AWS SA.
The organisation just removed the dangerous shard of bone from Darnell's mouth when another little dog named Archer was rushed in by his owner suffering from a chicken bone (drum stick) that was dangerously wedged across the width of his mouth, causing him extreme pain and distress.
AWS SA said: “His owner also tried to fish out the bone but in the process pushed it to the back of his mouth, almost down his esophagus lacerating his tongue in the process.
“After spending the past two days trying to dislodge the brittle chicken bone, she (Archer’s owner) finally came to the realisation that she too, was hopelessly ill prepared to deal with the emergency.”
They said Archer was so distressed and fearful that he needed to be sedated before they could safely remove the chicken bone at the hospital.
Both Darnell and Archer’s owners vaguely considered the dangers of the bones splintering and getting stuck in their pets, but never thought that any harm would ever come to their pets and fed them the bones, which led to all this distress.