Marilyn and Dennis Riley, with their dog, Trixie. Picture by Peter Boam.
HORRIFIC injuries that nearly killed a family pet should serve as a warning to anglers not to be careless with their tackle.
Trixie, a nine-and-a-half-year-old lab-rador cross, is continuing her recovery after emergency surgery to remove a fishing hook and weights from her stomach.
When taking Trixie for a walk alongside the River Medina, her owner, retired commercial fisherman Dennis Riley, 76, from Dodnor Lane, Newport, noticed a trace hanging out of her mouth but no sign of a hook.
The next day, however, she started to vomit and stopped eating. Two days later, she was still deteriorating, so he took her to Pet Doctors in Newport.
An X-ray showed a fish hook and weights in her intestine and her condition was so serious that vet David Beckingham operated immediately, performing a complex procedure involving opening both her stomach and her intestines to remove the fishing tackle.
Trixie is now recovering slowly at home with Dennis and his wife, Marilyn, though her recuperation is proving slow as she’s an elderly dog and had undergone major surgery just two months earlier.
Dennis said: "It’s been dreadful seeing poor Trixie suffer so much from a simple act of carelessness.
"Discarded tackle is a major problem — it regularly causes damage to outboards of boats moored here, including mine, but the suffering it causes to animals can be absolutely devastating, as Trixie’s experience shows. We’re so grateful to Pet Doctors for the care they’ve given her."
Mr Beckingham said: "The combination of the hook and the heavy weights causes huge damage to an animal’s internal organs and Trixie would have died if we’d not operated quickly."