Diamond engagement ring golden retriever ate shows up on X-ray photo

By Adam Dutton via SWNS

A hungry puppy sparked panic when she wolfed down her owner’s diamond and sapphire engagement ring – which showed up on an X-ray.

Elayna Rattenbury, 38, feared she had lost her expensive sparkler after it went missing from her bedside table.

The legal director suspected her pet labrador Stevie was the culprit after the pup sneaked into the bedroom and demolished a box of tissues.

She took the seven-month-old pooch to a vet and an X-ray revealed the ring was inside Stevie’s belly.

Incredibly, the ring had not damaged any of Stevie’s organs and the vet advised Elayna to “let nature take its course”.

Legal director Elayna and husband Dave spent four days searching through Stevie’s poo earlier this month before they finally found the ring.

Elayna, from Worcester, said: “I’d left the bedroom door open and Stevie had sneaked in and she has a real thing for tissues.

“When Dave went back in there were tissues everywhere which Stevie had grabbed from a tissue box from the same bedside table where I’d put my engagement ring.

“I went to see the mess she’d caused and immediately realized the ring was not there. It was a heart-stopping moment.

“Then I looked at Stevie and thought, ‘She hasn’t, surely she hasn’t?’ But oh yes, she had.”

The couple took Stevie to Linnaeus-owned Brentknoll Veterinary Centre in Worcester who confirmed the pup was to blame.

Elayna added: “The vets quickly got to the bottom of the problem and there was a real sense of relief in knowing that at least the ring was not lost.

“The problem now was retrieving it from Stevie’s tummy.

“The vets felt after some investigation that the ring was too far down.

“So, the only solution was to allow nature to take its course and let the ring pass right through Stevie and out the other end.

“I took her home and for the next four days I was rooting through her poo trying to find it.

“I’d expected to find it in the first 24 hours, so by day three I was thinking I must have missed it and started searching back through the poo bags from previous days.

“My husband Dave even bought a metal detector to try to find it and then, thankfully, on day four, it finally appeared.

“It obviously wasn’t looking its best, so I put it into a tub of hot soapy water for two days and every few hours I was taking it out, rinsing it, scrubbing it with a toothbrush and then putting it back in to soak.

“It certainly needed a good soaking and scrubbing before I dared even smell it, let alone put it back on.”

Vet Annelies De Vos said Stevie was lucky she had swallowed something so small.

She said: “As you can see from the X-rays, Stevie had definitely eaten the owner’s ring but, luckily for her, we could see the ring had not caused any internal damage and would pass through naturally within a few days.

“So, Stevie went home and we all just had to wait and see.

“Every day we were in contact see how she was doing and if the ring had appeared and on day four the owners contacted us to give us all the good news.”