A MUCH-LOVED pet has made a full recovery after eating 80 hairbands, thanks to the care and expertise of a West Yorkshire veterinary practice.
Princess, a 13-year-old Maltese X Terrier secretly stole the hair ties belonging to owner Deborah Ford’s 10-year-old daughter Skyler and swallowed one after another.
It was only when Princess became unwell and was taken to Ashlands Veterinary Centre, part of the VetPartners family of vet practices, that vets discovered a large clump of hair ties inside her stomach.
It is one of the most unusual cases vets at the practice have ever seen, and they are warning owners to keep hair bands out of reach of pets as swallowing them can be life-threatening.
Deborah took Princess to Ashlands Vets’ Skipton branch to see her usual vet, Sam Burnell, because she was worried her pet had lost weight and seemed depressed and not herself. Sam could feel a hard lump in her abdomen and after giving the pooch sickness-inducing medicine, Princess vomited up some hair bobbles.
An ultrasound scan showed there were more items inside Princess’s stomach, so Sam referred her to Ashlands’ Ilkley branch for further investigations.
At Ilkley, vet Amy Sansby used the practice’s endoscope, which is a long, thin tube with a camera on the end, to take a look inside Princess’s stomach. She inserted a special grabbing tool through the endoscope and spent an hour removing the hairbands, as well as brightly coloured scrunchies, a headband and other pieces of fabric and paper from Princess’s abdomen.
Amy said: “Pets swallow all sorts of items, but I was very surprised at the contents of Princess’s stomach and I’ve never seen so many hair-related items before, especially in such a small dog.
“Princess is very lucky that her owner brought her to us when she did, because her stomach was full of these items and they could have caused life-threatening internal damage. Fortunately, the hairbands were still inside her stomach, so we were able to reach them using the endoscope and carefully bring them out the way they went in.
“Using the endoscope meant we didn’t need to perform invasive surgery and this was very important in Princess’s case because she is on medication for a long-term health condition and has a higher risk of complications.
“Our advice to owners is to keep hair bobbles and hair ties well away from pets, as they can be tempting to play with or chew. It can be difficult with a dog like Princess that likes to eat things, and usually her owner is very vigilant, but it’s best to put anything out of reach that they might want to eat.”
Deborah, who shares Princess with her older daughter Brooke, 24, said she was distraught when vet Sam found a lump in the dog’s abdomen and feared it could be a tumour.
Deborah said: “I immediately thought the worst, so it was almost a relief when they told me what they could feel was a ball of hairbands.
“Princess is on medication which affects her appetite and we are very careful to keep harmful things out of reach and we don’t have bins in the house or leave food lying around. When Skyler got some new hairbands, she thought she had put them in a safe place in her bedroom, but Princess managed to sniff them out, along with some other scrunchies and headbands. It seems like she ate them all.
“The good news is that she’s made a great recovery, and I’m so grateful to the team at Ashlands Vets for saving her. Princess didn’t have a great start in life because she came from a puppy farm and has long-term health issues, but Sam and the team have always been brilliant with her. The whole team is caring and when I take my pets to the practice and I know they are in safe hands.”
Ashlands Veterinary Centre is celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2025 and its Ilkley branch is set to relocate to a new state-of-the-art site later this year, which will be twice the size of its current practice. With branch surgeries in Glusburn and Skipton, it is part of VetPartners, which owns some of the UK and Europe’s most respected and trusted veterinary practices and associated animal healthcare businesses.