On the early hours of Saturday 5th May 2018 my toy sized dog Nimble was rushed into emergency surgery. As you can imagine, I was beside myself, I wasn’t sure what had happened to her… she was lifeless, being sick and not eating… the emergency vet informed me that he thought that Nimble had something stuck in her small intestine or has something called ‘Intussusception’ wrapping of the small intestine (quite common in small dogs) the only way forward from here was surgery. The emergency vets was due to close and Nimble needed an x-ray to confirm the actual cause. I transported my lifeless poorly poo to my own vets surgery where they carried out an x-ray which showed something lodged in her small intestine, they thought it was bone as it showed up white like the colour of her own bones on the x-ray. Nimble was rushed into surgery as this is a life threatening situation… her intestine could have ruptured or swelled to the point of cutting off her air supply. After what seemed like forever I finally received the call to say that Nimble was awake and that I could fetch her, the vet couldn’t identify what he had removed from Nimble as it was gritty and dark brown – I went hot and dizzy – it was sand! I had brought Nimble a sand pit that she happily was digging and playing in on the evening of Friday 4th May 2018. After informing my vet of what it was he informed me that the sand had compacted (like when you build a sand castle) in my little pretty’s intestine blocking anything from passing!

My precious poo still needed vet care so I had to transport her back to the emergency vets as they are open during the night so that she could be closely monitored. Over a week on and various visits back to the vets my precious is starting to feel more herself. Yes she has a nasty scar and yes she appears malnourished but she IS HERE!

Nimble’s surgery cost me a total of £923.26p and her aftercare has cost me around £800.00.

I have spent many hours online, in the vets and on the streets informing people of the dangers of what sand can do to our dogs. A lot of people would just think that their dog had heat stroke and wouldn’t have taken them to the vets, that would have been TOO LATE!

It can be life threatening and I need to share this story. To share you can like the video i created on Youtube to raise awareness; My dog nearly died due to ingested sand

All I ask is a small donation of £1.00 and a share to help raise awareness.