Dandy had been throwing up on and off for a little over a week when her mom brought her in. Tori Shank is a radiology assistant at MedVet Akron in Ohio, so she knew what she was looking at on the ultrasound, and she did not like it. Something in the dog’s stomach looked like a mass.
“As soon as I saw it, I thought, there’s a mass in there,” Shank told The Dodo. The surgeon warned that opening the 7-year-old dog might leave them with nothing they could do. So instead of surgery, the team went in with an endoscope for a closer look.
It was a whole yellow potato. Shank figures it had been sitting in Dandy’s stomach for at least two weeks. She remembers having potatoes in the house but cannot recall the dog getting hold of one. The potato came out through the scope, Dandy perked back up, and apart from a sore throat for a couple of days she has been fine since. Shank has already picked out a potato costume for her for Halloween.
What this means for your dog: dogs swallow whole food items more often than owners expect, and something bulky sitting in the stomach can look a lot like a tumor on imaging. Vomiting that lasts more than a day, or keeps coming back after meals, deserves a vet visit rather than another day of waiting. This case is also a reminder to ask whether the least invasive option fits, since the endoscope answered the question and removed the problem without surgery. If your dog does swallow something whole, bring the packaging or a photo of it and say so early. Acorns are another fall item that can block a dog’s gut, and the signs can look much the same.