A tough Labrador cross has proven it's not just cats who've got multiple lives, after a suspected tumour turned out to be several shards of glass - discovered more than a year after colliding with a window.
Billie had barrelled through a window and the wound was clean and stitched up. Nothing seemed unusual at the time.
"She had absolutely no symptoms at all," says owner Caron Thorton.
"When I noticed the lump on her side a few weeks ago I took her back to our vet thinking it was a tumour."
She was sent to Veterinary Specialist Group (VSG), where it discovered she still had several shards of glass still in her abdomen.
They were starting to make their way out, forming the bump.
Surgeon Dr Damian Chase says it's something he hasn't seen before, and the pup was lucky twice over.
"A long shard of glass must have stabbed right into her abdomen and then broken into five pieces over time," he says.
"The glass didn't damage anything vital and has just been sitting in her body."
Three of the shards were around 10-12cm long, with two smaller pieces described as "fragments".
Billie recovered well and now her biggest problem is that she has to rest for a bit, not play.
"She's doing great," Ms Thorton says. "She keeps giving us her ball to throw but she isn't allowed to run."
As a referral clinic, VSG get to see the "weird and wonderful" - something this surgery definitely fit into.
"It shows us just how tough dogs are, really," Dr Chase says.
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