Chewy!!!

Chewed-up letters stick dog's jaws together

Toby the Jack Russell loves tearing open the post – but bit off more than he could chew when the mashed paper and glue sealed his jaws shut.

His owner, Gill Bird, returned home to find her mischievous pet could not open his mouth to eat.

‘He was drooling. I thought it was strange. All this paper was mashed around his teeth. It was absolutely stuck,’ she said.

She tried to prise open his jaws without luck and ended up taking Toby to the vet, who had to sedate him before picking away at the sticky mess.

The saga began when Ms Bird was out when the post arrived, leaving Toby to chew away to his heart’s delight.

‘Toby likes to attack the post. When we hear the letter box go we have to run,’ said Ms Bird, 41.

But this time things were different. ‘I came home with some fish and chips for lunch. I went to give him a chip and wondered why he wouldn’t take it,’ added Ms Bird, from Lee-on-the- Solent, Hampshire.

‘He had bubbles and saliva coming out of his mouth and he had a strange look on his face. It’s just really bizarre. I can’t help but laugh.’

Before long, the clamped dog was taken to vet Ian Wooding in nearby Stubbington. He described it as a ‘very unusual case’.

He said: ‘At first I thought I’d get his mouth open without a problem – but I soon realised it wasn’t budging.

‘We tried to scrape some of it out but the dog was getting quite worked up. He was growling and I think he would have bitten me if he’d been able to.

‘We decided to sedate him but even then it took the nurse and I a good ten minutes to scrape all the paper out of his teeth.’

Toby returned home a few hours after the sedation wore off, fit and well.