Dog swallows 1000 magnets, computer mouse and gloves

Polly the iron-guts Australian pooch has animal magnetism. The blue heeler swallowed 1000 magnets, weighing a kilogram, forcing life-saving emergency surgery. The blue heeler swallowed 1000 magnets, weighing a kilogram, forcing life-saving emergency surgery.

Greedy Polly is lucky to be alive, but it's not the first time her strange taste in tucker has caused concern for owner Cathy James. She has wolfed down a computer mouse, gardening gloves, a large rubber band, several rolls of fax paper and handfuls of gravel in the three years she has lived with Ms James.

Sunbury Animal Hospital vet Dr Glen Hastie was stunned by the X-ray, which showed a clump of magnets clogging Polly's stomach. The pointy-edged magnets chewed through 11-year-old Polly's stomach lining, making her dangerously ill.



Ms James, who runs a printing business, left Polly alone in her office for 20 minutes 10 days ago to feed horses on her Mickleham farm. "One of my jobs is to stick magnets on the back of cards, and after all these years she thought the box of magnets looked just delicious," Ms James said.

"I came back to do my work, and I noticed her rustling around, and I stuck my hand down (her throat) and pulled them out, and she was fine for the rest of the day. The next day she started drastically heaving and four of them came out, and I thought, 'uh-oh, I think she has eaten a whole lot more'.

"She weighed half a kilo heavier, and the vet said it wouldn't be that many, but when they operated there was half a gravel track in there as well." Ms James said Polly turned up her nose at the easily digestible food vet staff tried to feed her.