Tag Archives: intestinal disease

When I was a kid, our family dog ate the edges of my mother’s beautiful living room drapes. Because she loved that dog more than her children, she blamed us for touching the drapes with sticky fingers. In her mind, the food residue on the drapes enticed the dog to eat them and thus, the dog, but not the children, were forgiven. Fast forward to the present and, as a veterinarian at the Schwarzman Animal Medical Center, I routinely encounter patients who eat items with no nutritional value, a condition called “pica.” If you follow us on Facebook and Instagram, you’ve seen the dramatic x-rays of animals that have eaten items like a string of lights, an airtag, rocks, magnets, an ethernet cable and all manner of other non-food items. Today’s blog takes a closer look at pica—what it is, why it happens, and why it matters.