Labrador saved twice after eating hose pipe on trip to Sussex

Rodney, a three-year-old black Labrador, wolfed down the old pipe after digging it up from under a hedge.

His owners Richard and Oriana Kelly became concerned when they spotted Rodney retching and struggling to breathe while they were visiting Richard’s mother-in-law’s in Sussex.

They rushed him to a vets who took an X-ray which revealed their pet had eaten several sections of old hosepipe.

From left, Richard, Rodney the Labrador, vet Richard Nolan and Oriana

He underwent surgery to have it removed while on their trip down. 

But weeks later Rodney was rushed back to the vets after scoffing another length of old hose he found in the garden.

Richard, 36, said: "We'd moved house and the back garden is a bit overgrown.

"We let Rodney out and he'd go off behind the hedges, we didn't know what he was up to.

"Shortly afterwards, he got really ill, started being sick and acting really weird so we took him to the vet who did all sorts of tests and took an X-ray and scan and they realised he had something lodged in his intestines.

Rodney in Cheshire with his owners after a second operation

"We were away at this point at my mother-in-law's in Sussex so we had to take him to the vets there.”

After returning to their hometown Chester in Cheshire, Rodney ate another piece of old plastic after the couple moved into a new house.

Richard added: "We brought him back, he was going through his rehabilitation and three weeks later, after picking up a new puppy, we were doing renovations on the house and all living in one room.

"At this point, we didn't know at the time he'd found the foreign object in the garden, we didn't know where he'd got it from.

"We let both dogs out in the garden and Rodney started rummaging around in the hedges again and the following morning, the same thing happened again, he was being sick, he was retching loads - all the same things he'd been doing three weeks prior.

"So we took him to our local vet and tests revealed that this time there was something in his stomach and his intestines so he needed a slightly more complicated operation.”