King, a 2-year-old Labrador retriever from Harvard, has become the poster dog for a new health risk to animals, especially canines. He was featured in a TuftsNow story and appeared on Boston 25 News, with Christine McCarthy, to bring attention to this new health threat.
This truly serious problem is the proliferation of face masks in family living areas, cars, outside recreational spaces, anywhere a dog can get to them and do what many dogs do—eat them. Once in the dog’s gastrointestinal tract, the metal nose piece and the ties can wreak havoc.
Betsy Kehoe’s dog, “King.” (Courtesy photo)
Betsy Kehoe, King’s owner, doesn’t know how her pet managed to ingest two face masks, but when King was referred to Henry & Lois Foster Hospital for Small Animals in North Grafton, he had been vomiting off and on for two weeks and refusing his favorite food.
Catherine Stecyk, a surgeon and resident at Foster Hospital, could see the fitted nosepiece of a face mask in an X-ray. “We took King to emergency surgery, where I felt two wads of material,” said Stecyk in a MassLive article. “One was stuck in the stomach and extending into the beginning of the small intestine, causing it to bunch up, and the other one was a bit farther down the intestine. The intestine was inflamed and bruised, but not yet traumatized to the point of perforation, which was really lucky.”
Kehoe, in an interview with the Press, said that she wants everyone to be aware of the danger that those unsecured masks can pose. In TuftsNow at now.tufts.edu, Kehoe is quoted: “It’s so important to keep a close eye on your dog, especially if you have one like my Lab, who eats a lot of stuff. It literally takes one second for them to get into something they’re not supposed to.”
Discarded or accidentally dropped masks are appearing along roads, trails, and in parking lots. In the Tufts article, Maureen Murray, director of Tufts Wildlife Clinic, states, “I’m most concerned about entanglement from the ear loops,” although she has yet to see such a case.
April Paul, an emergency and critical care veterinarian at Tufts Veterinary Emergency Treatment and Specialties in Walpole, said, “I have done a bunch of surgeries on animals—especially at the start of COVID—who ate supplies for making masks.”
Since wearing a mask is mandated in some situations and is simply the right thing to do in many others, masks are ubiquitous in our environment and we need to develop the habit of securing and disposing of them properly. King was able to make a full recovery, but Stecyk warns dog owners that “it could’ve been a lot worse.”
For further reading
The article “Face masks pose health risks to animals” by Genevieve Rajewski, appeared in the Nov. 23, 2020, Health and Science section of TuftsNow at now.tufts.edu. It provides vivid anatomical descriptions of the problems encountered when pets eat nonedible things.
