Dog’s Change in Diet Leads to Cash Pains

Beth Borozan knew something was wrong when Buster, her golden retriever, took a break from their game of catch to spit up $1.49.

“Thirteen dimes and 19 pennies, to be exact,” said Borozan, who had acquired the 5-year-old retriever as a puppy.

Borozan didn’t panic, exactly, but she was distressed. Then she recalled another puzzling moment earlier in the day, “a suspicious clank in the pooper scooper.”

The realization hit her. Her mind leaped back to the previous Friday night, when she had come home from work to find the chewed remains of some coin wrappers on the floor. Since Buster had gnawed on paper and other odd items before, she figured he had gotten into her stash of wrappers.

She dashed inside her house to the desk where, days earlier, she had wrapped and forgotten about a roll of 50 pennies and one of 50 dimes. One hundred coins. $5.50, total.

Her stomach lurched. Not one thin dime or one red cent remained.

Borozan called her mother, who happens to raise and show golden retrievers. It was a Sunday, but mom would know what to do.

“Call the vet. Now,” mom ordered.

Still composed, Borozan called a pet emergency clinic. “Since Buster was acting fine, I thought they’d say, ‘Feed him four loaves of bread . . . let nature take its course.’ ”

The vet on duty, Ruthann Conklin, had other ideas.

“One penny can kill a dog if he doesn’t pass it,” Dr. Conklin told her. “It’s the zinc. Pennies today are 97% zinc, and it’s extremely toxic to dogs.”

Borozan’s composure began to crack.

She loaded Buster, still as lively as ever, into her car and barreled down to the clinic.

Through various flushing methods, the vet got Buster to purge himself of $2 and change.

But it wasn’t good enough. Buster had swallowed the cold cash more than two days ago. X-rays showed nine coins lodged in Buster’s intestines.

Surgery was necessary--immediately. “The pennies had already started corroding in Buster’s stomach,” the vet said this week. The dimes, made of cupronickel, were no problem, but the pennies’ toxic zinc could cause multiple organ failure, even death.

Now Borozan panicked. “I was scared to death. I realized I could lose him.”

Near midnight, Buster went under the knife. Five hours, three incisions and 27 cents later, he woke to a new leash on life.

Dawn was breaking when Conklin gave Borozan the good news and handed her a zip-lock bag containing several corroding pennies.

“When they gave me the coins in the baggie, I almost handed it back and said, “Put it on Buster’s tab,” Borozan said.

It was around that time that someone wisecracked the first of a dozen bad puns about how this was going to cost her a pretty penny.

“Got change for a quarter?” was the second, hollered by a lab technician as she and Buster climbed back into her car for the trip home.

“This is the most punned dog ever,” said Buster’s regular vet, Eugene Cherry, who has cared for the pet since the surgery with a diet of Pepcid AC and gruel. The retriever, whose $5.50 dinner ended up costing his owner $2,500, is doggedly working his way back to his three-cup-a-day dog chow diet.

Both of Buster’s vets report that coins are not the oddest thing they have removed from canine stomachs.

“I’ve removed whole corncobs, pantyhose and an entire leash from other dogs’ stomachs,” Conklin said.

Cherry once treated a German shepherd “who ate a whole phone outlet box. A doxie ate a Styrofoam sequined ball with 100 pins in it. We operated and got the pins. And of course they’re always eating socks, spools of thread and golf balls.”

Borozan has decided to sign Buster up with the Love on a Leash program. The pair will visit people in Ventura County convalescent hospitals, retirement homes and at St. John’s and Community Memorial hospitals. Buster loves everyone he meets.

“You boathead,” Borozan said affectionately to Buster in her living room, two weeks after he ate his fill of coins. The unrepentant pet responded by nodding and nudging Borozan’s hand with the same slobbery tennis ball he dropped when he first showed her the money.