I adopted my brother’s middle-aged westie, Maggie. She did tend to eat anything unattended, but usually leaned towards actual food. One memorable day, I came home to a living room carpet covered in what appeared to be termite mounds. Maggie had consumed about a kilo of chinchilla bathing sand and a second course of sanitary towels (the ones with wings). The latter contained some kind of absorbent gel, which made the vomit sculptures impressively solid – the vet who checked her afterwards (Maggie was remarkably unaffected, and certainly did not learn any lesson) remarked that it was something of a miracle that she threw it up. If not for my carpet. Fiona, 56, works for a non-profit research institute, Fulford, North Yorkshire
I have a partially sighted two-year-old red fox labrador and a more matronly five-year-old black lab. I have a long daily commute and my dogs come with me. There wasn’t space for a cage that was big enough for both labs in the boot of my small hatchback, meaning they had free access to the whole boot during our two hours on the road. Last year, the younger one, with possible assistance, ate up all the electrics she could get to, pulling them out from under the back seat. She also ate the floor of the boot, the polystyrene around the spare tyre and the backing of the back seats. All done in relative silence during our drive until the car suddenly stopped in the middle of the road as I was driving out of a car park one morning, with all the warning lights flashing. The entire car had to be rewired, costing around £8,000. Thank goodness for comprehensive car insurance. She is no longer allowed to travel in the boot unless she’s in her cage and, thankfully, nothing she ate needed advanced veterinary attention. Rebecca, 51, veterinary surgeon and researcher, Norway
Before he was two, my dog Spotty ate my garden lawn sprinklers (hoses and all), creating a maze of trenches. He ate 12 lawn lamps, a palm tree, all his mattresses (some in 30 seconds) and a few rugs, two of which were so entangled in his ears, legs and snout they had to be removed at the veterinary clinic (with a scalpel). The cherry on the cake was when he ate two wasps’ nests on two different occasions and, again, was taken to the veterinary ER, where he was the terror of the incredible vets there. Whenever they heard my car horn, they knew Spotty was coming with some weird emergency. He lived happily until 13, passing, against all odds, of natural causes. Isabel Tallysha-Soares, university professor, Portugal
The first “old dog” we adopted was a 16-year-old drahthaar named Carter. He wasn’t in great shape when we got him from the shelter, and we didn’t know anything about his previous life. We learned very quickly that he was fully capable of opening drawers and doors, and had most probably lost his sense of taste. Before we learned how to “Carter-proof” our home and my handbags, he ate several tampons, my menstrual cup and a shea butter soap (he didn’t make any bubbles and luckily didn’t get sick at all). He went on to eat my wallet, including my credit card. Aurélie Viard-Tebby, 43, dog adopter, Écuisses, France
My staffie Rupert, a rescue dog, decided to eat my reading glasses. I found the chewed-up frames, one arm and only one lens. Rupe showed no ill-effects. Staffies are insanely tough, emotional, daft but loyal dogs, so I guess he thought chowing down on my specs was a way of showing his devotion to me. Stephen Holloway, retired, East Anglia
When my children were little, I always made their birthday cakes. A particular favourite was a sofa-shaped Madeira cake, covered in pink fondant icing, with a Barbie doll arranged to sit on it. A neighbour asked if I would make one for her daughter, who was turning three and obsessed with Barbie, which I duly did. I remember the doll (a Florida Barbie complete with sunglasses). My neighbour was thrilled when she had the preview. I had to do something for my ageing parents at the time the party started, so I left the cake on the dining table and gave my husband instructions about how to get it to the party, along with our children. When I arrived, about half an hour after everyone else, I was horrified to see a supermarket cake with a transfer image of a Barbie doll face on top. I hissed at my husband, “What did you do with the actual cake?” He then revealed that our recently acquired rescue staffie, Macy, had polished off the whole thing – Barbie, sunglasses and all – and he had made a mercy dash to the local supermarket to be able to arrive with some kind of Barbie cake, rather than disappoint a three-year-old child. I was relieved that my neighbour had actually seen the cake, so that I didn’t look like a letdown merchant. Gil Sewell, 65, chief people and culture officer at a mental health NGO, Auckland, New Zealand
My driving licence fell out of my wallet and my dog Disco, a collie-cross rescue, must have found it. When asked what had happened to my old licence, I had to claim, “My dog ate it.” He also ate the F11 key off my computer keyboard. Fortunately, I had a spare. I think the common thread to these items is that they were things that I handled frequently. The F11 key controls the volume on my PC. James Skene, 48, computer programmer, Auckland, New Zealand
Our dog, a jack russell, has attempted to eat so many weird things it’s hard to narrow down the list: innumerable varieties of footwear (socks, slippers, shoes, boots, baby booties – he’s not proud), the slipcover from an old sofa, an entire bottle of baby aspirin, the stuffing and squeakers from squeaky toys, you name it. His most revolting food preference is rabbit poo. Our back yard teems with rabbits, so there is an abundance of poo. He leaps upon it with a gleam in his eye, like a little old gourmand who has spotted a bowl of beluga caviar. We retch, he grins. Anonymous, Minneapolis, US
On a walk one day, our sprocker spaniel puppy, Ozzy, picked something up, crunched it and swallowed it. It looked suspiciously like a shard of terracotta, about 3in long and 1in wide. Kind of like a piece of broken flowerpot. I took a few deep breaths and repeated to myself, “Don’t be silly, it was probably just a crunchy brown leaf. Why the hell would a dog eat a piece of terracotta?” It was only a couple of days later, when picking up a poo, that I noticed something sharp had torn the poo bag. I investigated and found three eye-wateringly sharp 1in-square pieces of terracotta in an otherwise uniform dog poo. Even though one of them appeared to have come out sideways, my oblivious adolescent dog did not bat an eyelid. Rai Fuge, 41, care worker, Launceston, Cornwall
We rescued Prince Harry from a pet shelter when he was one. He was skin and bones, and had many behavioural issues as he had been abandoned twice, including issues around food – it was obvious he had gone really hungry. At first we would only leave him alone for five minutes, but gradually built this up to one hour. However, when we forgot to hide the TV remote, we would come home to find it eaten. We’ve bought at least six new ones. One day we did hide the remote but he was obviously looking for something to chew. He jumped up high (around 1.6 metres) and took the phone intercom mouthpiece off the wall and ate it. Harry is a tall boy. Edward, campaign leader, Barcelona, Spain
I have a small-medium mutt dog named Freddy Krueger, after her little velociraptor claws. A strange mix of breeds, ranging from chihuahua to Australian cattle dog, she was a feral desert puppy picked up with one sibling by a rescue. No one knew how long they had survived the Sonoran desert on their own. Due to her peculiar start in life she has always had peculiar habits, particularly with regards to food. All these years later, she still can’t resist scavenging whenever she’s outside. The weirdest thing that I have seen her eat is habanero peppers, fully ripe and fresh off the vine. I was at a friend’s house for lunch in the back yard when I noticed Freddy kept disappearing into their bushes. We realised that she was sneaking into the undergrowth of the pepper patch to pluck fresh habaneros off the plants and scarf them down. I have no idea how many she gleefully consumed that day. All I know is she cannot be trusted around pepper plants any more. Shockingly, she never experienced any digestive upset after her pepper binge, nor anything else she’s ever eaten. She should be studied for science. Sarah, 36, student and education assistant, Canada
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