A ten-week-old puppy underwent an emergency operation to remove a nine and a half inch stick which it skewered itself on while playing.
Jack, a Jack Russell, was playing in the garden of his owner's home in Fordhouses, Wolverhampton, when he ran onto the 23 centimetre stick on Sunday afternoon.
The stick is more than half the size of Jack who measures 17 inches (43cms) from nose to tail.
Owner Scott Johnstone rushed him to a local vet where Jack underwent an emergency 40-minute operation involving micro cameras and micro tweezers. Afterwards Scott said: "Jack likes to eat and chew everything, so I had bought him lots of toys to stop him playing with twigs and furniture.
"He is normally quite good but on this occasion the people looking after him turned their back for a few seconds and this accident happened.
"They are like children, you need to keep your eye on them all the time, you can't turn your back for a second."
Vet Kathryn Cave said Jack's breathing had not been affected in the accident as the stick did not penetrate his windpipe.
She said: "We did not know what we were dealing with at first I could feel it in his throat and I thought it was a fragment of a stick.
"It wasn't until we anesthetised him that we realised it was a rather long stick.
"When you think the stick was 23cm and Jack is only 43cm, there was not a lot of puppy left over.
"He could breathe because his windpipe was not affected."
