Puppy undergoes surgery after swallowing 8-inch steak knife

Lots of dogs nose around in things they’re not supposed to, and sometimes that curiosity can lead to illness or injury. But it wasn’t chocolate that sickened Lexi, a 6-month-old Staffordshire bull terrier in Sydney, Australia: It was a steak knife measuring nearly 8 inches long.

Yahoo! News reported that an X-ray of the utensil, which became lodged next to Lexi’s heart after she swallowed it, baffled Dr. Margaret Scimone, of the Animal Referral Hospital in west Sydney. Her colleague Dr. Jody Braddock, a medical specialist at the animal hospital, wrote on Facebook that she’d never seen anything like it before.

“We knew that Lexie's best chance of survival would be to remove the knife as soon as possible before it could cause more damage,” she said in a post on Facebook.

Lexi’s owner, named only as Tonka, sought care for the pup after she wouldn’t stop vomiting. She thought Lexi was going to die, Yahoo! News reported.

“It wasn’t a little knife— it was a steak knife,” she told the website. “I broke down in absolute tears seeing that X-ray.” Tonka said she was not sure how Lexi got ahold of the utensil.

In a 45-minute surgery, veterinarians extracted the knife from Lexi by pulling it back up her esophagus. The pooch spent three days in intensive care, and she remains on bed rest for 10 days.