I’m not talking about the 10-7 split in the tenth frame of a bowling tournament, but more like when they find a 2 week old dead rabbit and try to get as much down their neck before the tall ugly thing that drives the Jeep can wrest it from the Clenched Teeth of Death. There is even a phrase for this: Wolfing It Down. I see it time and time again. Mouse caught, hark it down, bones, fur and all as fast as possible. But they never choke. Hell, I nearly died eating Popcorn the other day!
Tonight, I dropped an ice cube down Doxie’s throat. Didn’t mean to, but thats how it went. I was sure that he would die from asphyxia and brain-freeze (God, that would be BAD!), but no. He managed to hark it up and chomp it into pieces. And it occurred to me: I’ve never seen these bastards choke on anything. And how would you do the Heimlich on a Dachshund? CPR is Right Out! They lick their own assholes.
How does this work??? Why don’t dogs choke on shit?
I have owned dogs for most of my life, and never had one choke. However, a quick google search yields numerous sites that all say dogs choking is in fact a common emergency.
I was not able to find any actual statistics on how often dogs choke on my (admittedly brief) google search.
Dogs have several sets of whiskers on the side of their heads, as well as on the bottom of their jaw - I believe this is to alert them if they try to stick their head into a hole chasing after some prey; that the hole is too small, and they should back-out before getting stuck. Perhaps they have some similar safety net to alert them that the thing they are about to swallow is too big, and to spit it out and bite-off a smaller chunk, or risk choking. Just a guess.
They are probably in a hurry to get it down before you come along to spoil their fun.
This doesn’t really answer the question about dogs choking, but I heard somewhere that chocking is way more common in humans than any other animal. This is because when humans evolved the muscles in our throats that allow us to control our breathing enough to be able to speak rather than simply grunt, it required the trachea to move closer to the esophagus. And that makes it a lot easier to choke. But apparently evolution selected for the ability to speak in spite of the higher risk of choke.
Of course, the fact that humans choke more often than other animals doesn’t mean other animals never choke, and @engineer_comp_geek’s cite shows that dogs do choke occasionally.
I will say that my dog has never choked, but she has vomited due to eating/drinking wrong (by that I mean going too quickly). So that’s sort of like giving herself a Heimlich.
Ditto WildaBeast. I’ve read that one things humans sacrificed in the race to evolve complex speech is that we are unusually prone to choking (though I didn’t have that many details).
Dogs seem quite dedicated to eating fast. I’ve heard of a few dogs getting things caught in their throats (or mouths), and being in some distress and needing veterinary care, but not because it prevented breathing.
One of my pugs choked once. She was elderly and partially toothless. She got a chunk of kibble stuck, probably because she snorted/inhaled it down. She couldn’t breathe and her tongue was starting to turn blue.
I remembered illustrations showing how to do the Heimlich on babies, so that’s what I did on her. It worked - knocked the kibble out but she was shocked that I should thwack her between the shoulder blades so hard. She avoided me for hours after that.
It hurts to type this out, because that was a scary thing that I try not to remember. I thought sure she was about to die in my arms.
About 6 months ago, I got my dog some chicken jerky treats, and she apparently tried to swallow a piece that was just a bit too big or too rough, and she started choking on it. I manually massaged it out of her throat; only took seconds to dislodge, but that was one of the more legitimately terrifying moments I’ve experienced. (Got her as a puppy, just before Covid lockdowns, and also during my divorce; we BOTH have separation anxiety now…)
Once our current doxie grabbed a used paper towel (that was using to wipe my mouth while eating). I ripped it out of his mouth…or attempted to. I only tore off a little scrap, and he gave a couple of chomps and swallowed the rest. I was sure he was going to choke, but he was fine. Little bastard.
Sometimes dogs choke when they are playing with a small ball or similar and it accidentally gets swallowed and then gets stuck. I’ve heard of that.
But as posters have noted, dogs are designed to eat fast and in large chunks, before anyone (like another dog) takes it. If it turns out to be a mistake, well, it comes back up just as fast.
My friend was making bait for fishing, strips of calamari on a board with a hook in each.
He turned away, and suddenly one was missing.
I grabbed my dog (a Weimeraner / GSP mix) and detected a faint fishy odour on his breath. I did everything I could to make him vomit, shoved my hand so far down his throat that he should have choked… but nothing.
I had to borrow a 4x4 to drive up a hill to get cellphone reception and phone my vet, who said, “you only need to worry if you see symptoms in the next few days, but if you do it is an emergency”.
I spent the next week carefully poking at his poo with a stick but we never did find that hook. And the dog is still alive and well.
At my last dinner party a guest accidentally dropped a chicken leg bone and my alert dog nabbed it before it touched the floor. He swallowed it whole, instantly. We fretted for a few days but there were absolutely no consequences.
My dogs have never choked but they do “hork” a lot, like cats with furballs. Usually after they’ve tried to eat grass, or if they inhale a treat. They seem to be good at sorting out whatever they’ve done.
