vet quoted us fifty four hundred dollars for emergency foreign body removal on our seven year old lab tonight, then we found what is almost certainly the swallowed rubber ball in the yard four hours later, looking for the calibrated read on what to do about the scheduled surgery in the morning

Otis is our 7 year old chocolate lab, 78lb, healthy, no prior surgeries, the dog whose only chronic condition is being a labrador retriever who eats things. tonight at around 4pm i caught the tail end of him spitting something out into the grass during fetch and from a distance i was about 70% sure it was the small orange kong squeaker ball that had been in our yard rotation for three years. i could not find the ball after a 20 minute search. by 6pm he had vomited twice (yellow bile both times, no chunks of ball material visible) and was lying on his side with his belly tucked tighter than usual. we made the call to take him to the emergency vet at 6:45.

at the ER they did a physical exam, abdominal palpation (he flinched on the cranial abdomen but not the caudal), and a single view abdominal radiograph. the radiograph showed what the ER vet described as "a rounded soft tissue density in the proximal duodenum, possibly an obstruction, possibly normal duodenal content, not radiopaque enough to confirm." they offered three options. one, exploratory laparotomy tonight to investigate and remove the foreign body if present, quoted at $5,400 including anesthesia, surgery, two day inpatient stay, post-op meds. two, hospitalization with IV fluids and serial radiographs every 6 hours to track motility, quoted at $1,800 for 24 hours with the option to convert to surgery if obstruction confirmed. three, discharge with conservative monitoring (bland diet, anti-emetic injection, return immediately if symptoms worsen), quoted at $340 for tonight's visit. the ER vet's recommendation was option one, framed as "if he has an obstruction and we wait, we are looking at $7,500-9,500 and a much sicker dog, the marginal cost of acting now if we are wrong is worth the downside protection." we asked for the probability she would assign to actual obstruction given the imaging and the clinical picture. she said roughly 55-60%. we asked if she could keep him overnight on option two and convert to surgery in the morning if needed. she said yes but the cumulative cost if we ended up needing surgery would be $6,800-7,200 rather than $5,400. we asked if we could go home and monitor and come back if he worsened. she said yes that is option three, she would not recommend it but it is medically defensible if we are willing to drive back immediately on any symptom escalation.

we chose option two because we wanted the imaging continuity overnight without committing to surgery yet. we paid the deposit, hugged the dog, drove home at 9:15pm, and at 11:40pm my partner was walking our other dog in the backyard with a flashlight and found the orange kong squeaker ball half buried in the mulch about 30 feet from where we'd been playing fetch. it is the same color, the same brand, the same approximate scuffing pattern. it is what i thought i saw him spit out. i would say i am now 90-93% sure that the thing i saw him spit out was this ball that he found again and re-buried.

so now i am sitting at 1am writing this and the questions are. one, do i call the ER right now and tell them we found what was probably the foreign body, knowing that the soft tissue density they imaged was still real and we still don't have a confirmed explanation for the abdominal pain and the two vomits. two, in the morning the conversation will be either "discharge him on a bland diet, the foreign body was probably the ball, see your regular vet for a follow up" or "the morning imaging still shows the duodenal density, we are recommending we proceed with surgery." how much weight do i give to the recovery of the ball outside vs how much weight do i give to "the soft tissue density was on the imaging and a single dog can swallow more than one thing." he eats rocks, mulch, socks, pieces of dog toys, all of it. three, what is the responsible play here for a generally healthy 7 year old lab who is now resting comfortably on IV fluids and has not vomited since 7:30pm. looking for the honest version from people who have been in the foreign body decision and the second-opinion-on-an-imaged-density decision, including the version where you called the ER at 1am with new information and they recalibrated, and the version where the ER said "we still recommend surgery" and you had to decide whether to push back. happy to update the thread in the morning. just need the calibrated read tonight