What do you do when your dog swallows a fish hook? Don’t pull on the line!
This is Orla, an 8 month old Golden Retriever. She was walking around Narrabeen Lake and went past a fisherman with a baited hook. What would any self respecting Golden Retriever do? Of course she swallowed the bait, the hook and the fishing line.
This is where things could have got tricky. Her owner grabbed the line and pulled it. Luckily he soon failed and with one big swallow everything was gone.
Why not pull on the line? We have had this happen before. Someone pulled on the line and the hook tore a wound into the oesophagus just over the heart. This was a major problem and that dog had to be fed through a tube into it’s stomach for a month – A big palaver.
Luckily Orla’s owner had failed to pull on the fishing line and allowed the fish hook, bait and line to hopefully go into the stomach.
Orla arrived at PAH looking very pleased with herself and covered with sand. The first thing was to locate the fish hook. It is really important that it was not caught in the oesophagus which runs just above the heart.
Orla was an excellent patient and had 2 conscious x-rays. 
There was the hook in the stomach. Hopefully the bait was still protecting the barb.
Within the hour Orla was up at the specialist centre NVS. She was anaesthetised and the hook was retrieved via endoscope. There was no damage to her oesophagus and she should make a full recovery. 
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