Sock-Snatching Labrador Throws Up and Chows Down

There’s an old saying of “fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.”  Well, in both cases the shame belongs to Becca the Labrador retriever, who ate the same sock twice.

“My dad noticed that Becca threw up a sock in the backyard, but he didn’t pick it up at the time because he was up on a ladder painting the house,” said Becca’s owner Kevin Koritza of Greenwood Village, Colo. “When I got home less than an hour later the sock was gone. I didn’t think anything of it at first, but when Becca started acting lethargic and vomiting I had a feeling she may have eaten the sock again. The veterinarian did an ultrasound and confirmed that Becca had an intestinal blockage. Sure enough, after a $2,500 surgery I had my sock back.”

Koritza’s claim for Becca’s twice-ingested sock was one of more than 87,000 claims received in the month of October by Veterinary Pet Insurance, the nation’s oldest and largest provider of pet health insurance. Becca’s uncommon accident was considered along with other out of the ordinary claims submitted in October and selected by VPI as the most unusual of the bunch.

“The veterinarian had never seen anything like it,” said Koritza. “We couldn’t figure out why she would eat the sock a second time after it made her so sick the first time. Of course, I felt horrible because the whole ordeal could have been avoided if I had just picked up after myself. I consider the experience one very expensive lesson in good housekeeping.”