On April 23, Jeff Courcelle returned home only to discover his five-year-old dog, Mocha, circling around three watch heads, a stack of screws and other metal pieces, and some munched leather straps.
Courcelle contacted his wife, Michele Parkinson, informing her that he felt very alarmed over what Mocha did. The couple narrowed it down to the possibility that the 80-pound Doberman had dragged down their basket of watches from the bedroom and fed on almost all of their three wristwatches.
"She had somehow managed to open a drawer, get inside and pull out three watches and assorted pieces of leather jewelry and she ate them," Courcelle said.
The Boston couple observed no alarming symptoms but still brought Mocha to the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animal's Angell Animal Medical Center (MSPCA-Angell), a 24-hour emergency and specialty facility. After checking the dog, the doctor conducted an endoscopy procedure lasting three hours to completely see the contents inside the bellyof Mocha.
"They took x-ray and she looked mechanical. There were gears springs and all kinds of pieces of metal. There were some long pieces of untouched leather that she just sort of inhaled and went about her business," said Courcelle.
The veterinarian informed the couple that they admitted Mocha just in time.
"Because we got her there so fast very few pieces had moved into her digestive system so that's why they were able to get almost everything out in one procedure," Courcelle explained.
This is the second time that Mocha has eaten indigestible objects and has been taken to a hospital. Last summertime, she fell ill and an emergency stomach surgery had to be done on her. During the procedure, a plastic from an orange juice container that punctured her intestine was recovered.
As a result, she had 28 stitches under her belly and 10 inches of her intestines were detached. In this latest incident, Mocha was lucky since the watchpieces had not passed into her digestive tract and were still present in her belly.
Additionally, Parkinson mentioned that her husband was very enthusiastic about getting an Apple watch, but after some discussion, they could not come up with a good reason why Courcelle should purchase one since at the time he still had three watches available.
Courcelle joked that Mocha must have overheard the conversation, so Parkinson is now convinced that both her husband and Mocha must have teamed up to destroy all of Courcelle's three wristwatches to give him a reason to buy the Apple watch.
Photo: Mike Halsall | Flickr
