Ouch: Jack the Dog Eats 111 Pennies with His Bagel Crumbs

He really only wanted the bagel crumbs, but the pennies were in the way. What a meal.

In Manhattan the other day, a Jack Russell Terrier named Jack (nice!) had a problem. He wanted to eat a bunch of bagel crumbs, but they were scattered in and around a whole bunch of pennies. 

Wait, let's back up, about two minutes. That's when Jack was on the floor looking longingly at a bag containing a bagel on a desk. Jack was going to get that bagel, so he jumped up on the desk, knocking the bag and a bowl of pennies to the ground. Jack ate his bagel. Then he noticed the crumbs scattered amongst hundreds of pennies. 

What to do, what to do ... 

Jack made a decision. He just ate everything around him, just hoovered up whatever pennies were unlucky enough to be alongside a bagel crumb. You get the good with the bad, you know? The important thing was that he got the good: bagel crumbs. 

“He’s like a voracious Tasmanian devil -- if there’s food, he’s got to get it,” Tim Kelleher, Jack's owner, told the New York Daily News.

"He'll eat anything he can get himself into, whether it's garbage or whatever," he told Today.com.

The problem, of course, is that Jack inhaled 111 pennies. Dogs shouldn't eat 111 pennies. Jack's owner realized as much when Jack wandered up to him and began vomiting. Kelleher didn't know what Jack had gotten himself into, so he simply monitored the dog. Once Jack started vomiting up blood, he quickly took him to the vet. 

That's where he saw the X-ray of 111 pennies in his dog's stomach. And the 111 pennies had enough zinc in them to pose a lethal threat to Jack's liver and kidneys. 

“If Jack would not have had the pennies removed, the consequences would have been fatal,” said Jack's vet, Dr. Amy Zalcman.

So they operated, fishing out the coins during a two-hour procedure. It went well, and Jack is back to his old self. 

“He’s doing great,” Kelleher said. “He’s driving me crazy again.” 

Via the New York Daily News

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