Posted: October 15, 2008, 5 a.m. EDT
Crawford, a 2-year-old Brittany, has the honor of being the most recent winner of an unusual insurance claims contest. It’s a distinction he earned after a snack of gel inserts from his owner’s bra sent him to the veterinarian’s office with some gastrointestinal issues.
His owner, Tara Claxton of Pennsylvania, said she was running late for work and changing and she didn’t shut her drawer all the way. “When I got home from work, half the bra was gone,” she said.
The veterinarian said there was no blockage; however, the gel from the pads may have been mildly toxic. Crawford was put on a special diet, Claxton said, and after a few weeks the entire bra passed and his appetite returned.
“Needless to say, all my bras are tucked away in a drawer and won’t be left out again,” she said.
The dog’s claim was one of more than 85,000 that were received in the month of August by Veterinary Pet Insurance. As the most unusual claim for that month, Claxton will be in the running for the company’s first Hambone Award.
Each month, the company will nominate a claim and in July 2009 ask the public to vote for the most unusual claim of the year. The Hambone Award is named in honor of a dog that got stuck in a refrigerator and ate an entire Thanksgiving ham while waiting for someone to find him.
When the dog was eventually found, along with a licked-clean ham bone, he had a mild case of hypothermia. Honorable mentions in August included a Labrador Retriever who ate a two-pound chocolate cake and a Dachshund who got mixed up in a fight with a skunk.