A member of the Dogs Deserve Better listserv just passed on a warning about companion animals and paper shredders. The short version: it may be rare, but occasionally dogs have been euthanised after getting their tongues caught (and ripped clean off) in shredders with automatic features. So, if you own a paper shredder with a “auto on” feature, please take care to unplug it when not in use. Better yet, get rid of it and rip up your important documents by hand (hey, it makes for good upper body exercise!).

My first thought upon reading the forwarded warning was that it must surely be an urban legend, but a quick search of Snopes turned up nada. Plus, the email included links to several news articles on such incidents, as well as additional warnings for parents of human kiddies.

Here are the stories referenced:

Paper Shredders Can Be A Danger To Children And Pets (Inside Edition, 3/30/06)

Paper Shredders Can Be Dangerous Risk Around Home (WRAL.com, 2006)

Paper Shredder Dangers To Kids, Pets (ABC, 11/3/05)

Paper shredder leads to nightmare; Puppy lost its tongue (The Spokesman-Review, 3/2/05)

Even though my shredder’s sat unplugged for years (damn thing keeps jamming up, and now I’m glad for that!), I’ll take the warning at face value and keep it thataway.

I’m still not sure whether the bit about dogs not being able to survive sans tongues is true or not. Certainly, I can see how the lack of a tongue would make eating, drinking, and cleaning difficult for canines, but…my cynical side tells me that if a human were lacking such an important appendage or organ, the docs would find a way to compensate. It’s an understatement to say that the bar for medical surrender is set much lower for mere (non-human) animals.

Know of any other common household items that pose a grave danger to Fluffy, Spot, or Jack, Jr.? Leave ‘em in the comments. I’m too tired to write about anything but paper shredders tonight – and will probably have a hard enough time forcing images of severed doggy tongues out of the noggin’ come bedtime without throwing other damaged body parts into the mix.

Crossposted at KellyGarbato.com, because I wouldn’t want a dog to lose his tongue on accounta lil’ ole me not crossposting.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 14th, 2006 at 10:56 pm and is filed under Companion Care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.