Grand Rapids police dog Rocco eats rocks covered in beef juice – and his handler could hear them in his stomach
A Grand Rapids Police Department K-9 called Rocco needed surgery after scoffing garden rocks coated in slow-cooker beef juice. His handler realised how many when he could hear them in the dog's stomach.
Police dogs are trained to sniff out anything. Nobody said anything about eating it.
Rocco, a K-9 with the Grand Rapids Police Department in Michigan, ended up in surgery after an unusual snack. His handler, Austin Diekevers, told WWMT he had “made some old beef sandwiches in a crock pot” (a slow cooker) and threw the scraps over his deck – they usually go to his chickens. Some of the “crock pot juice” landed on his landscaping rocks.
Stock photo: a Wisconsin sheriff’s police dog – not Rocco. Photo: Michael Pereckas / CC BY 2.0 (Flickr via Wikimedia Commons).
In the few minutes it took him to put the slow cooker away, Rocco was chewing the rocks. The vet wasn’t too worried as long as he kept eating and drinking normally. But about a day later Rocco was off his food, and when Diekevers felt his tummy: “I could actually hear the rocks inside of his stomach.”
AI illustration. (Spot Gaz, our gorilla, hiding somewhere in this picture.)
X-rays at the Animal Emergency and Specialty Hospital of Byron Center showed rocks in his stomach, and surgery removed them. “Rocco came through surgery like a champ and spent 24 hours with us before heading home,” the hospital said. It is now inviting guesses on how many rocks came out – no prizes, just bragging rights.
AI illustration.
It’s Rocco’s second emergency this year: in April he impaled his leg on a fire pit and needed blood transfusions. He’s expected back on duty in about a week. As WWMT put it, he “leaves no stone unturned. Or, rocks uneaten.”
Reported by WWMT News Channel 3, with details from UPI.
