Dog eats 15 baby pacifiers (and survives!)

From the "how on Earth?" files comes the story of Lulu the bulldog: a medical marvel with what can only be described as a cast-iron stomach.

Lulu's owner, Jennifer Zwart of the suburban St. Louis area, noticed that her baby's pacifiers were disappearing at an alarming rate,  but she never imagined the reason they went missing.  St. Louis' Riverfront Times explains:

Then Zwart saw Lulu licking a pacifier. Moments later, the binky was gone. "She took Lulu to the vet and they did an X-ray that showed a large, unknown mass in the dog's stomach," explains [VPI Pet Insurance] spokesman Grant Biniasz. "During surgery the doctors just kept pulling out one binky after another. Some of them were black due to decomposition. They even took pictures of the pacifiers. We believe the dog had been eating them for at least six months even though she showed no ill effects."

In all, veterinarians removed 15 pacifiers, a bottle cap and a piece of a basketball.  "They had never seen anything like it," Zwart said. 

Lulu's feat of gastric daring led VPI to name her insurance claim the most unusual of the more than 75,000 claims it received in December.  (A dog that ate several wigs and one that ate a packaged fire log each received "honorable mentions.") 

Fortunately for Lulu, she "handled the surgery very well," according to her owner, who assured VPI that pacifiers would no longer be left where she can get them.

--Lindsay Barnett

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Photo: Los Angeles Times