Oregon dog eats 43 socks, vets remove every single one

It's a frustrating, centuries-old conundrum for every man, woman and child: "What happened to that missing sock?"

Well, one Portland-area family now knows exactly what happened to 43 of their missing socks -- the dog ate them.

The family's 3-year-old Great Dane had been repeatedly vomiting and retching all day, leading the dog's owners to take it to DoveLewis Emergency Animal Hospital in northwest Portland.

Vets looked at abdominal radiographs and found "a large quantity of foreign material" in the dog's stomach. The vets went to work, performing an exploratory surgery, and what they found is almost hard to believe.

They removed 43 and 1/2 socks from the dog's stomach.

A photo provided by the hospital showed all 43 socks; it's unknown if there are any matches.

The Great Dane's family wasn't available for comment Wednesday, but the dog made it out OK and went home one day after surgery.

An X-Ray image of the Great Dane's stomach was one of the top finishers in a contest from Veterinary Practice News, whose contest proves "animals will eat just about anything."

DoveLewis points out it's not the only interesting case their vets have dealt with over the years. They performed one surgery on a dog that ate Gorilla Glue, a procedure that is posted to the DoveLewis vet training website.

"We do remove articles of clothing very often from dogs," said Ashley Magee, a staff surgeon at Dove Lewis. "For whatever reason, dogs do tend to like to eat their owner's clothing, whether it's an anxiety thing (and) they are missing their owners, or the person on the clothing attracts them, or whether they're mad, who knows? This is certainly is the record holder for sure."