Dog Gets Surgery After Swallowing AirPods —and They Still Work

Apple AirPods ending up in your child's stomach might be one of the scariest things that anyone could imagine. The nightmare came true for a dog parent in Willerby, UK, after her pooch gulped down a pair of the wireless headphones and the charger, mistaking them for Easter treats, and had to be rushed to the vet immediately, according to a blog post on the veterinarian's website. The veterinarians performed an emergency operation on the puppy to remove the AirPods — that are amazingly, still operational. According to the post, the case came out intact, with the AirPods' charging light still on. Even more shocking was the fact that both the charger and the AirPods worked perfectly despite the incident.

Rachel Hick, a 22-year-old woman, was giving her puppy treats on Easter Sunday when the AirPods accidentally fell out of her pocket, the post said. Even before she realised, Jimmy just swallowed those.

Talking about the ordeal that “sank” her heart, Rachel said that she was taking photographs of Jimmy getting his Easter egg to post on his Instagram account. The “hyped up and excited” pup suddenly jumped and knocked the AirPods out of Rachel's pocket. Within seconds, they were snapped up by Jimmy.

She rushed Jimmy to the local vet clinic that specialises in out-of-hours emergency care for pets. The X-ray images showed the AirPods lodged in the pup's digestive system. Apart from causing an obstruction, there was also the risk of the battery acid leaking. So, the vets decided to operate on the dog immediately. To their surprise, the AirPods case didn't have even a tooth mark and the charging light was still on.

In a similar incident in 2019 a Taiwanese man had swallowed an AirPod while sleeping and got them back the next day without the earphone breaking down in his digestive system. Bizarrely, they were not damaged and worked perfectly. The man said that he fell asleep with his AirPods in his ears. When he woke up, he found only one of those. Though the AirPod tracker app, he found the other AirPod was in the room itself. On hearing the AirPod's beeping sound, he realised it was coming from his stomach, and the doctors just gave him laxatives. Turns out the little earphones are a lot more resilient than we may realise.

Is OnePlus 9R old wine in a new bottle — or something more? We discussed this on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Later (starting at 23:00), we talk about the new OnePlus Watch. Orbital is available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts.