Thread: Dog ate sponge
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Old February 17th, 2021, 01:35 AM
jwallis jwallis is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2021
Location: Austin
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Asking the public for technical answers, you're almost bound to get random misinformation. In my opinion it's worse than no information. Calling a vet is of course the best answer. A sponge would likely not even show on x-ray because they are not dense.

Here is another data point. This happened within the last 24 hours:
Dog - 8 month old pitbull / great dane / australian shepherd mix (according to Embark dna test). 63 lbs. This guy is thick and strong like a pitbull.

He ate a scotch-brite dobie scrub sponge yesterday around 1pm. Thank God it had holes in it and he did not eat the plastic "net" around the sponge itself. It's unclear if the sponge is cellulose or not, but it did not appear broken down or digested at all when it came out as vomit or as stool. I would fear the net part more because, well it's a net. It could easily get caught on chunks of stool, food, or caught in his intestines like string might.

I was unclear if he'd swallowed the sponge whole or in pieces until I found a piece near his bed, which indicated that he'd likely torn it apart before consuming (turned out this was correct).

I wanted to add actual data, so after he vomited at 1am (about 12 hours after ingestion) I saved it and photographed it the next day, next to an intact dobie scrub sponge for comparison. The next afternoon I found chunks of the sponge in his stool and photographed that as well, because I like to back up claims with evidence, as opposed to making arbitrary claims without credentials or evidence. The internet is so annoying.

Anywho... here is what came out as vomit. I grouped the pieces net to a "good sponge" to approximate how much had NOT come up as vomit. The green chunks are part of a Whimzee, which is a high-fiber dog treat.


...and as stool. The lighter-colored chunks in the lower left and lower right are both sponge, there were other smaller chunks as well. For scale the piece in the lower left was almost an inch long.


This sponge had been under my sink, had been well-used and had been my "old sponge" that I used for scrubbing the kitchen sink (only with dish soap, no harsh chemicals), as opposed to a "good sponge" for washing dishes. So this sponge had seen plenty of bacteria in its life, but had been dry for at least several days (last time I washed the sink).
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