Vet retrieves $4,500 wedding ring from basset hound's stomach

Albuquerque - Rachelle Atkinson had customarily taken off her wedding ring and placed it on her nightstand and, in the morning, would put it back on her finger.

One day she went to place the ring back on and it was gone. "I went to go put it on and it was nowhere to be found," Atkinson said, reported KOB. Atkinson and her husband Scott suspected the family dog, Coraline, was the ring-snatching culprit. After several days of checking the 10-month-old dog's feces, no ring appeared. "She was the only one in our room so we immediately looked at her and she looked guilty," Atkinson had said after a search did not turn up the $4,500 ring. KOB reported, "I had to go through all the 'poos' everyday and squish them up and make sure there were no hard lumps in there so yeah, that wasn't much fun," said Scott Atkinson. Unfortunately his efforts did not yield any success in finding the ring. Ultimately the couple took Coraline to the veterinarian where the doctor did an X-ray and subsequently found the ring. Seemingly the ring was too heavy to pass through the dog's digestive system on its own and was not going to come out naturally. The vet did a surgical procedure where he 'fished' for the ring in order to retrieve it. Coraline was put under, and then the vet used a tube-like tool to reach inside her stomach and pull the ring out. Reportedly the procedure took several hours and Coraline is now doing fine. Many dogs like to eat non-food objects and reportedly basset hounds like rocks according to the vet. Although, in 2010, one Denver family's basset hound ate 31 old roofing nails, the rabies tag and siding from the house which had to be surgically removed. About Coraline, her owners say, "She's a good dog and she's just a wonderful addition to our family but we'll never forget this - the ring and her have gotten more expensive," Atkinson said.