Bertie’s Story – The Dangers of Sticks

As all vets know, sticks can be very dangerous for dogs. They may not look dangerous, but it just takes your dog to slip whilst playing fetch, or a splinter to get stuck in their mouth, and they may need costly emergency surgery. Bertie’s story shows just how dangerous they can be.

Help fund veterinary care for our animals, Join Team SAFE today

When Bertie the Jack Russell was brought to the centre as a stray, it was immediately obvious that something wasn’t right. He was pawing at his face and salivating. A quick look revealed a stick lodged across his hard palate!

Unfortunately he was too scared to allow us to remove the stick conscious, so we had to give him a general anaesthetic. Two minutes later, it was out!

The stick looked and smelled like it had been stuck for at least a couple of days. There were shallow ulcers at either side of the hard palate where the stick had been sitting in contact with the inside of the mouth, but thankfully with the stick removed these quickly healed.

Please remember, watching your dog playing with sticks, chewing sticks or fetching sticks may look like great fun but be aware that things can go wrong, like poor Bertie sadly found out, but he was very lucky it wasn’t more serious.