11:18am UK, Monday April 03, 2006

A three-month-old puppy survived after swallowing a metal tent peg that was almost as long as its body.

Disa the Staffordshire bull terrier was taken to a local vets with a suspected stomach upset.

180 x-ray tent peg stomach of puppy

Tasty morsels

But an x-ray showed the problem was an eleven-inch peg.

One senior vet at the Sheffield PDSA PetAid hospital said she had never seen anything like it.

Liz Airey said: "We suspected a foreign body may be to blame but didn't expect it to be so big.

"We operated immediately to remove it as it could have proved fatal."

Owner Peter Jones, from Rotherham, South Yorkshire, said he had put Disa in the garden to play for a few minutes.

When she started being sick he thought it was her food upsetting her.

He said: "I was so shocked when the vet rang to say they had discovered an eleven-inch tent peg in her abdomen.

"I cant even understand how she managed to swallow it, as she isn't much longer than the peg itself."

Happily, Disa is now back home after making a full recovery.