Man learns why his dog sneezed, had nosebleeds for 6 months

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A Michigan man and his dog are getting back into their normal routine after the dog had a five-inch stick removed from its nasal cavity.

Mark Kovicak told WXMI that his 2-year-old beagle, Rex, chased a rabbit into a wood lot in April and came out of the lot "acting strange."

"I knew something wasn't right," Kovicak told Inside Edition. "Rex and I went walking into the woods, and he came out and had blood all over his nose."

Kovicak took Rex to the vet, who flushed out Rex's nose and prescribed antibiotics for any possible infection.

But the once playful dog continued sneezing and having a runny nose for six months. Periodic vet visits didn't help.

It wasn't until Kovicak took Rex to BluePearl Veterinary Partners to get a CT scan that the dog owner got answers.

"It was a very long stick in his left nasal cavity," said veterinarian Amanda Conkling. "He couldn't breathe out of that side."

Doctors pulled a five-inch stick out of Rex's nose with forceps. Luckily, Rex, whose snout is between two and three inches long, didn't suffer damage to any soft tissue, WXMI reported.

"Our doctors see a fair amount of strange foreign bodies, but usually, they've been swallowed, and usually, they're not found in a pet's nose," Carrie O'Brion, communications manager for BluePearl, told CBS News.

Kristopher Sharpe, a doctor at BluePearl, said the size of the stick affected Rex more than a smaller stick would have.

"The body attempts to wall off and remove any foreign object within the nose. If the stick was significantly smaller, then his immune system would have walled it off and slowly broken down the material," Sharpe explained. "Given the size of the stick, his body would have attempted to wall off the inflammation, but the wood material would have remained."

Kovicak told Inside Edition that Rex is "back to 100 percent now."

"He came out, I think, at 3:30 or something, and by 6 o'clock, he was frolicking around," he told USA Today. "His energy level was right back, kind of where I remembered it, prior to this all happening."

"If you're struggling to find a diagnosis with a pet, (don't) give up," Kovicak told WXMI.

Conkling recommended dogs wear protective netting over their orafices to prevent foreign objects from entering the nose and ears.

Cox Media Group